Brushing aside expectations that, the winner can only manage a narrow margin for the Tirupati Assembly constituency, YSRC contestant Bhumana Karunakar Reddy emerged victorious with a huge margin of 17,975 against his Congress rival M Venkataramana.
Though the margin looks small compared to other constituencies, it is massive compared to number of votes polled in the constituency.
Tirupati recorded the lowest voting percentage, 54.
69 percent, among the 18 constituencies.
It is also bigger when compared to the margin of actor-turned-politician K Chiranjeevi, who had defeated the same Karunakar Reddy during the 2009 general elections, with a margin of over 15,000 votes.
Though tension gripped the counting hall when Venkataramana started with a majority of 16 votes in first round and gave a fight in second, wherein the YSRC candidate went to a majority of 117 votes.
After that tension mood was off with the margin of YSRC candidate swelling from the third round to the last round (19th).
While, Reddy got 59,195 votes, the Congress nominee got 41,220 votes.
The TDP candidate Chadalawada Krishnamurty was confined to the third place after securing 30,453 votes.
Despite losing deposits, CPM candidate K Murali and BJP candidate J Madhusudhan also secured sizable votes by getting 2,372 and 1,103 votes respectively.
The announcement of the results went on at a snail's pace.
The final result was announced after 4:30 pm, with the poll observer personally monitoring all the calculations round-by-round, after he found some errors in the beginning of the counting process.
Tirupati Winner YSRC's B Karunakara Reddy
It is the tribute offered by denizens of Tirupati for the late chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, their support to YSRC chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and a fitting lesson to chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, opposition leader and rajya sabha MP K Chiranjeevi.
This is a clear verdict by the temple town folk to the ruling Congress party, which has not looked into the burning problems of the town, for the last three years.
"It is a bitter lesson for them, who have unjustly imprisoned Jagan due to political vendetta," he alleged.
Thanking voters, Reddy assured that he will prove best MLA and will do justice to his post by solving the problems of Tirupati, by raising them in the AP legislative assembly and also will strive to protect the sanctity of the pilgrim town.
TDP’s Chadalawada Krishnamurty
"I welcome the verdict of the voters.
The ruling party has committed irregularities and distributed huge amounts of money to voters and registered about 25,000 bogus votes.
All these factors helped the Congress in getting the second place.
A majority of intellectuals and urban voters have not opted to use their right to vote right and this has affected my chances, he observed.
CPM’s K Murali
This is a fitting lesson to both the ruling and opposition parties.
They should concentrate on changing their policies and attitude.
Though, we are disappointed on getting such a low number of votes, we will improve our performance by taking up more peoples' oriented movements, he added.