HYDERABAD: The TRS has wrested the Huzurnagar Assembly seat, by delivering a crushing blow to the Congress. At the end of counting of votes on Thursday, TRS nominee S Saidi Reddy romped home with a margin of 43,233 votes, a record in the constituency. After the results were announced, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao described Saidi Reddy’s victory as a tonic to the TRS.
He lost to TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy in the 2018 elections by about 7,000 votes. In the byelection held now, he not only wiped out the margin of defeat but also garnered more than 43,000 votes, demolishing the Congress citadel.
At the end of the day, Saidi Reddy polled 1,13,094 votes (56.32 per cent of the total votes polled) while his Congress rival PCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy’s wife Padmavathi secured 69,737 votes (34.74 per cent of the total votes polled).
Ever since Huzurnagar was created in 2009 in delimitation of constituencies, Uttam Kumar Reddy won all three elections — 2009, 2014 and 2018 — making the TRS lose hope of winning it.
The seat fell vacant after Uttam Kumar Reddy resigned following his election to the Lok Sabha from Nalgonda in the last general elections.
Uttam’s wife, N Padmavathi, was nominated by the Congress for the seat as she had lost her Kodad seat in 2018. The byelection result has also shown the BJP and the TDP their places. The BJP, which was in an overdrive after winning four Lok Sabha seats in the State, had bragged that it would emerge as a contender for power in the State, but in the byelection, it ended fourth in the race.
Interestingly, a tribal independent Sapavath Suman ended third, beating both the TDP and the BJP in the race.
Pulling himself together after Padmavathi lost the by-election, TPCC working president Ponnam Prabhakar consoled himself that his party had ended runner-up, which showed that the Grand Old Party was the alternative to the TRS.
Saffron party MLC N Ramachandra Rao, however, said that they were not worried or disappointed since they did not have any expectations on the seat in the first place. In this byelection, the Congress and the TDP, which fought the 2018 elections in alliance, contested as opponents now.