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opposition candidate. In Vizianagaram, the opposition candidate was a political non-entity from the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and Vishy campaigned for him energetically. When the results came in, PVG Raju retained his Bheemunipatnam seat comfortably and Bhattam Sriram Murthy was trounced by the candidate V Rama Rao from the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. The Congress which had done exceedingly well in 1962 having won 11 seats in the district fared very badly winning only one seat.And so it was that PVG Raju returned to public life, not with the characteristic energy of earlier years, but yet sending out the signal that he was a force to be reckoned with. At the state level too, political alignments had changed and Brahmananda Reddy was now the Chief Minister. Though ministerial colleagues in the past PVG Raju and Brahmananda Reddy had never seen eye to eye with each other politically. The accident put paid to any possibility of serious executive involvement in politics and he was overlooked by the leadership and not assigned a ministerial post. Given his opposition to the Chief Minister, he became part of the dissident faction within the Congress. When the mid-term elections were announced for the Parliament in 1971, he decided to contest from Visakhapatnam. Political watchers say that this was the toughest election that PVG Raju contested in. The Congress party dithered on giving him the ticket. A faction led by the Chief Minister Brahmananda Reddy worked behind the scenes and opposed his ticket, instead supporting Tenneti Viswanadham the sitting MP. Finally, the Congress leadership decided that the party would take a neutral stance and give neither of them the ticket. They faced off as Independents. Voters attending Indira Gandhi's public meeting saw the strange sight where both 140