Telangana: TRS wins Munugode bypoll, defeats BJP candidate by 10,309 votes
Hyderabad: In a three-cornered fight, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) Candidate Koosukuntla Prabhakar Reddy on Sunday romped home in the high-stakes Munugode Assembly byelection by defeating his nearest rival and BJP Candidate Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy by a margin of 10,309 votes.
The final result was declared after completion of 15 rounds of counting process at Food Corporation of India (FCI) godown in Arjalabavi village in Nalgonda district.
TRS wrests the Munugodu Assembly seat from the Congress Party.
The Election Commission, however, has yet to declare the result officially till this report is filed.
The TRS candidate who secured a lead of 1,292 votes in the first round appeared conceding ground to the BJP candidate in the second and third rounds of counting when the saffron party managed leads of 841 and 36 respectively.
The situation however changed from the fourth round till 14th round as the TRS managed to consolidate its position and continued the leads over the BJP. It lost the 15th round to BJP by 88 votes.
In the 2018 election, Rajagopal Reddy had won the Munugode Assembly seat on Congress party ticket defeating his nearest rival K. Prabhakar Reddy of TRS by 23,552 votes. He had resigned from the grand old party in August and contested the November 3 byelection after joining the BJP.
Prabhakar Reddy polled 97,006 votes and Rajagopal Reddy 86,697 votes which included postal votes, according to Election Commission of India.
The Congress party put up a dismal performance with its candidate Palvai Sravanthi getting 23,906 votes, including postal votes, and forfeited deposit.
About 482 voters opted for the None of The Above (NOTA) option
Eleven other parties and 32 independents in the fray also lost the deposits.
The TRS secured a vote share of 32.95 per cent in the bypoll followed by BJP 38.8% and the Congress 10.58 per cent.
As soon the result of 14th round of the total fifteen rounds was declared and TRS has emerged victorious, the party activists celebrated the victory of Prabhakar Reddy by bursting crackers at Telangana Bhavan here.
Earlier, the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, at one point of time drew flak from the opposition side as there were delays in releasing the round wise information pertaining to counting of votes.
CEO Vikas Raj asserted that the counting process have been conducted in a transparent manner and said Counting however took time as there were several candidates in the fray.
(With UNI inputs)
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