TIRUPATI: Telugu Desam Party (TDP) candidate M Suguna trounced her Congress rival R Sridevi by a massive margin of 1,16,524 votes in the byelection to the Tirupati Assembly seat, the results of which were announce Monday. The victory margin is all the more stunning considering the fact that the polling percentage in the byelection was only 50.
Out of the total 1,47,216 votes polled in the byelection across all the 256 polling stations, Suguna got 1,26,152 votes -- or 85.7 per cent of them, while Sridevi secured just 9,628 votes -- or just 6.54 per cent -- and lost her deposit.
Since the beginning of round 1 and until the end of round 19, Suguna went on increasing her margin getting 7,000 votes more than her rival on an average in all the 18 rounds.
In the last round of counting of 1,842 votes, she got 1,540 votes. Despite its candidate losing the deposit, the Congress succeeded in increasing its vote share compared to the 2014 general election, even as the local leadership did not extend any cooperation to her.
Out of the total 13 candidates who contested the byelection, apart from the Congress candidate, Lok Satta Party candidate Kalluri Balasubramanyam and an independent Pothi Reddy Venkata Reddy succeeded in crossing the 1,000-vote mark as they got 3,819 (2.60 per cent) and 3,156 (2.14 per cent) votes respectively. The remaining nine contestants failed to get even 500 votes each. Interestingly, as many as 2,152 voters — 1.46 per cent of the total number of voters — cast their votes for NOTA (None Of The Above).
During the 2014 election, TDP candidate M Venkataramana, the late husband of Suguna, had secured 99,313 votes (57.56 per cent), while his nearest rival from YSRC Bhumana Karunakar Reddy had got 57,774 votes (33.49 per cent) and Congress candidate M Devanarayana Reddy had bagged just 2,848 votes (1.65 per cent) and the Lok Satta candidate 2,210 votes.
But, now, in the byelection held in the absence of the YSRC, both the TDP and Congress have increased their vote shares. While the TDP, which banked on the sympathy wave, got a whopping over 85 per cent, the Congress increased its votes share to 6.54 per cent from 1.65 in the 2014 Assembly election.
Interestingly, the number of votes polled by NOTA in the byelection was more than double that of the 2014 Assembly elections — 2,152 (1.46 per cent) now against 1,018 (0.59 per cent) in 2014. It may be recalled that the death of Tirupati MLA M Venkataramana in December, 2014 necessitated the byelection for the Tirupati Assembly seat.
It may be recalled that the death of Tirupati MLA M Venkataramana in December, 2014 necessitated the byelection for the Tirupati Assembly seat.