The Jana Sena has tied up with the Left and the BSP in Andhra Pradesh. It has allotted 21 Assembly seats and three Lok Sabha seats to the BSP. Seat-sharing talks with the Left parties are ongoing.
Actor-turned-politician Konidela Pawan Kalyan, 47, founded the Jana Sena Party on March 14, 2014. In the 2014 elections, Pawan Kalyan supported the TDP-BJP alliance, campaigning alongside TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu and then Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, but did not contest himself. The Jana Sena did not put up any candidates in the elections that year.
Over time, Pawan became disillusioned with the ruling TDP over various issues, including farm distress, special category status, etc. He started actively touring Andhra Pradesh from September last year, meeting with farmers, women, unemployed youth, academics, and professionals. In January 2018, he had toured Telangana.
When he started off, Pawan was the only major leader in his party. There are a few other recognisable faces with him now, including the former Speaker of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly Nadendla Manohar, and former IPS officer V V Lakshminarayana.
Pawan’s ideology is to bring social equality. His fans call it “Pawanism”. He says that his party represents politics without caste or religion. He aims to reduce the use of money in politics, and to fight corruption. One of the points in the Jana Sena’s manifesto is to bring the Chief Minister under the Lok Ayukta.
Maintaining simplicity and austerity, Pawan or his party leaders do not spend much money for organising public meetings or campaigning. When Jana Sena invited applications from people seeking to contest elections last October, more than 3,000 people applied. Most of the applicants were social activists, lawyers, doctors, farmers, and student leaders.