assembly-elections

Updated: Oct 24, 2019 20:07 IST

The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) won the by-election to Huzurnagar assembly seat in Telangana’s Suryapet district by a handsome margin.

TRS candidate Sanampudi Saidi Reddy won the seat by defeating his nearest rival N Padmavathi of the Congress party by a margin of 43,233 votes. Saidi Reddy got 1,12,796 votes while Padmavathi polled 69563 votes.

Telugu Desam Party candidate Chava Kiranmai got 1,827 votes and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Kota Rama Rao managed 2,621 votes, both lost their deposits along with 24 other independent candidates.

The by-election to Huzurnagar seat was necessitated with the resignation of Pradesh Congress Committee president N Uttam Kumar Reddy after being elected to the Lok Sabha from Nalgonda.

The by-election was a matter of prestige for the Congress, which had won only 19 seats in the elections to 119-member state assembly in December, 2018. The number came down to 18 with the resignation of Reddy. Then, 12 MLAs joined TRS, leaving the Congress with only six MLAs, meaning the party lost the status of the main opposition party in the assembly.

Ever since it was created during the delimitation of assembly constituencies in 2009, Huzurnagar had been a stronghold of the Congress. In the last elections, Uttam Kumar Reddy won the seat by a slender margin of 7,466 votes over Saidi Reddy. In this year’s by-elections, Uttam Kumar Reddy fielded his wife Padmavati, who had earlier represented Kodad constituency between 2014 and 2018.

Both the TRS and the Congress went all out to win the Huzurnagar seat. Almost all the senior Congress leaders, including the PCC chief and working president A Revanth Reddy undertook hectic campaign for Padmavati.

The TRS campaign was spearheaded by party working president KT Rama Rao and as many as 70 leaders stayed put in the constituency to canvass for Saidi Reddy.

The TRS candidate attributed his victory to the welfare and developmental programmes undertaken by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. “The people of Huzurnagar had been suffering due to lack of development under Uttam Kumar Reddy. They realised that only the TRS victory could bring the constituency on the path of development,” he said.

Former MP and PCC working president Ponnam Prabhakar said the Congress had lost the elections in Huzurnagar despite making a coordinated effort by all its leaders. “It is a victory of money and muscle power over democracy,” he alleged.

For the BJP, which is hoping to emerge as a powerful alternative to the TRS and capture power in 2023 assembly elections in Telangana, the by-election was a shock as its candidate got around 2,000 votes.