HYDERABAD: Former Telangana Health Minister and BJP candidate Eatala Rajender retained his Huzurabad Assembly seat with a thumping majority, defeating TRS candidate Gellu Srinivas Yadav by a margin of 24,068 votes.
Since the counting of votes began this morning, Eatala Rajender took the lead in all the rounds except two and in the postal ballot. He has been winning the Huzurabad seat since 2004. Of the total votes polled, Eatela Rajender got 1,06,780 votes while Srinivas Yadav got 82,712 votes. Congress candidate Venkat Narsing Rao secured 3,012 votes.
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A total of 30 candidates were in the fray in the by-polls, caused by the resignation of Eatala Rajender after he was dropped from the state Cabinet by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao following allegations of land grabbing. Rajender resigned from both the TRS and the state Assembly to join the BJP.
The constituency saw a long and bitter campaign with both the TRS and BJP accusing each other of using money, liquor and other gifts to lure voters. TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and his son and TRS working president K T Rama Rao stayed away from the campaigning.
In 2018, Rajender had retained Huzurabad, defeating his nearest rival Kaushik Reddy of the Congress by over 43,000 votes. The TRS candidate had polled 1,04,840 while the Congress candidate secured 61,121 votes. BJP candidate P Raghu polled only 1,683 votes, which was less than NOTA votes (2,867). Kaushik Reddy recently quit the Congress and joined the TRS.