HYDERABAD: Teenmaar Mallanna, an Independent candidate has taken the ruling and Opposition parties by surprise by putting up a tough fight in almost every round of ballot counting in the Biennial Graduate Election for Nalgonda-Warangal-Khammam Graduates’ MLC constituency.Although his name has appeared in 39th place in the ballot paper, thousands of voters marked him as their first preference. The result being that Teenmaar Mallanna made TRS candidate Palla Rajeshwar Reddy sweat it out.
Chinthapandu Naveen (39), who is popular by his sobriquet Teenmaar Mallanna, is known for his ferocious attacks against the incumbent government and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on his web-based news portal, which has 9.2 lakh subscribers on YouTube. Naveen rose to fame with a popular television news show presenting news in colloquial language and in a satirical format in which he used to disguise himself as an old man.
With the aim to win the Graduate MLC election, Teenmaar Mallanna started his campaign six months back. He embarked on a tour throughout the Nalgonda-Warangal-Khammam Graduates’ constituency on a padayatra, and emphasised the failures of the State government.
In the previous election for the same Graduates’ segment, Teenmaar Mallanna had contested on Congress ticket and stood third position by securing 13,033 first priority votes against the total polled votes of 1,49,718. Six years down the line, he has won the trust of over 1 lakh Graduate voters.Interestingly, Mallanna has even pipped Telangana Jana Samithi president M Kodandaram to the third position.Many of his supporters and political observers feel that Mallanna could have easily won the election, if there were no other popular contestants like Prof Kondandaram, Dr Cheruku Sudhakar, Rani Rudrama.