KHAMMAM/SANGAREDDY: While the ruling TRS sweeping the Legislative Council elections was more or less a certainty, its worst fears — of cross-voting — were proven to be true on Tuesday.
Winning six out of the six seats on offer did please the party leadership, but the joy was muted due to cross-voting by some of its public representatives. In erstwhile Khammam district, Sattupalli MLA Sandra Venkata Veeraiah demanded an internal review on the cross-voting so that “the conspiracy by some senior leaders to defeat party candidate in local body MLC elections is exposed”. Speaking along with Minister Puvvada Ajay Kumar and other MLAs and leaders, Sandra accused a TRS leader of orchestrating the cross-voting but did not name anyone.
TRS candidate T Madhusudan won the Khammam local body MLC elections bagging 480 votes, while Congress candidate Rayala Nageswara Rao got 242 votes despite the party having 96 votes. The TRS leadership had earlier suspected and complained to the State Election Commission that Sangareddy MLA Jayaprakash Reddy was bringing pressure on its voters through his relatives.
It is also being debated how the six votes went to M Mallareddy, an Independent candidate along with eight additional votes to Congress. The ruling party is calculating whether some TRS representatives voted for the Congress or whether there are any TRS voters among the 12 invalid votes. Finance Minister T Harish Rao has repeatedly told party leaders that the party has 777 votes in the district and would win with a good majority. The party is also forced to think that despite carrying out welfare work in the district, no money had been released from the government and the MPTCs were not given due respect. However, some leaders from Sangareddy are trying to pass the buck — they blame Medak voters for the cross voting.
Admitting that some TRS members in Sangareddy did resort to cross voting, a ruling party leader said that Congress got eight more votes than its 230 and the TRS got 762 out of 777 votes.
At the end of the day, Sangareddy MLA Jayaprakash Reddy has won a moral victory — he proved that he could hold his own against the TRS by getting the Congress to field his wife despite knowing the party would lose. Doing so, he managed to deprive the TRS of an unanimous win, and showed that the Congress is not a divided house in the district.
So near, yet so far for ex-Mayor
KARIMNAGAR: Former Mayor S Ravinder Singh, who contested as an Independent candidate and secured 232 votes in the elections to the Legislative Council, on Tuesday, said that the final tally of votes cast in his favour could have been more had the election authorities created proper awareness and conducted more orientation programmes. “As the BC Welfare Minister expected, the two TRS candidates didn’t get equal votes,” the ex- Mayor pointed out
Moral win for Adivasi aspirant
ADILABAD: Independent candidate Pendur Pushpa Rani, who became the first Adivasi woman to contest in an MLC election in the country, managed to secure 75 votes and described it as a moral victory against TRS. While claiming that the BJP and Congress have openly supported her candidature, she alleged that the MPTC, ZPTC members and councillors did not vote for her as they were lured by inducements.