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YSCRP wins 6 MLC seats, TDP springs surprise with 1 victory
Panchumarthi Anuradha won the MLC seat despite the party lacking adequate numbers in the legislative assembly. Anuradha was declared elected as she polled 23 first preferential votes of the MLAs, as against 22 votes required to win the seat.
Hyderabad
The opposition Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday sprang a surprise in the elections to the state legislative council under MLAs’ quota, when its candidate Panchumarthi Anuradha won the MLC seat despite the party lacking adequate numbers in the legislative assembly.
Elections to seven vacancies in the legislative council under MLAs’ quota were held and all the 175 members of the assembly cast their votes.
Anuradha was declared elected as she polled 23 first preferential votes of the MLAs, as against 22 votes required to win the seat. Though the TDP technically has 23 members in the assembly, its actual strength is only 19, as four of its MLAs – Vallabhaneni Vamsi, Karanam Balaram, Maddali Giridhar and Vasupalli Ganesh – had defected to the ruling YSR Congress party.
The TDP issued a whip to all its 23 members to vote in favour of its official candidate, but since it was a secret ballot, the whip had no impact. Yet, Anuradha managed to get 23 first preferential votes, indicating that there was a cross-voting from the YSRCP.
On the other hand, the YSRCP, which has a strength of 151 MLAs in the assembly fielded candidates for all the seven seats, hoping to win all of them comfortably with the support of defected MLAs – four from the TDP and one from Jana Sena Party.
But the party could win only six seats. Its candidates V V Suryanarayana Raju, Pothula Sunitha, Jayamangala Venkataramana, Bommi Israel, Chandragiri Yesuratnam and Marri Rajasekhar were declared elected. The seventh candidate Kola Guruvulu, who got only 21 votes, lost the seat to Anuradha.
The YSRCP leadership was suspecting that two of its rebel MLAs Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy and Anam Ramanarayana Reddy would vote for the TDP. It received a shock when the TDP got two more votes, apparently due to cross-voting.
In the elections to the MLC seats in the graduates’ constituency, too, the TDP shocked the YSRCP by winning three out of four seats – one in north-coastal Andhra and two in Rayalaseema region.
TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu’s son and party general secretary Nara Lokesh said Anuradha’s victory was like a slap on the face of YSRCP president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. “In the last assembly elections, Jagan spoke in a humiliating tone when the TDP won 23 seats. Subsequently, he poached four of our party MLAs. Now, our candidate Anuradha has won the MLC seat with the same 23 votes on 23rd day of March. Is it not the script of the god?” he asked.
Former minister and YSRC lawmaker Kurasala Kannababu said the YSRC had not technically lost the seat. “As per our strength in the assembly, we could win six seats and we got the same. Since the TDP has a strength of 23 MLAs, it could win the seventh seat,” he said.
Kannababu said the YSRCP had fielded the candidate for the seventh seat only because some of the TDP MLAs had extended their support to the ruling party. “Yet, our seventh candidate has lost the seat. Since TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu is an expert in luring the rival party members, he might have succeeded in it,” he said.
The YSRCP leader said the party would make an introspection as to how it lost the election and who would have betrayed the party, so that corrective steps were taken.
