The ruling YSR Congress Party has won the Badvel Assembly bye-election in Andhra Pradesh with a margin of 90,000 votes. Fielding Dasari Sudha from Badvel, the YSRCP more than doubled its own lead on the seat compared to the 2019 Assembly elections. The bypoll became a necessity when sitting MLA G. Venkata Subbaiah passed away.
Reacting to the developments, Gandikota Srikanth Reddy, chief whip of the Andhra Pradesh government said: “People of Andhra Pradesh are CM Jagan and YSRCP, this proves that the hollow attempts made by the Opposition to defame our CM have yielded no results and the people have rewarded us for our governance and our CM’s vision.”
In 2019, the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) managed to win the Badvel Assembly constituency with a margin of 44,734 votes. Badvel is a reserved constituency. And, as a tradition, TDP and Jana Sena opted out of contesting this seat. The Bharatiya Janata Party had fielded youth activist Panathala Suresh and Congress fielded P.M. Kamalamma.
Out of the total 565 postal ballot votes, Dasari Sudha secured 483 votes and was followed by her distant rival from the BJP Panathala Suresh who managed to secure only 54 votes, while the Congress party’s candidate PM Kamalamma got only 14 postal ballot votes.
Meanwhile, the YSRCP candidate who managed a comfortable lead from the very first round of counting, managed to secure a majority of 90,089 votes at the end of the 10th and final round of counting.
While the overall number of votes Dr. Dasari Sudha secured was 1,11,710 votes, BJP’s Panathala Suresh got 21,621 votes, followed by Congress party’s PM Kamalamma who secured 6205 votes. NOTA came in 4th place with 3,635 voters deciding to reject all the contestants in the poll fray.
Eatala Rajender of BJP wins Huzurabad Seat
In another news in the neighbouring state of Telangana for Huzurabad Byelection which became a prestigious fight for TRS Chief and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao and his party, turned out to be a dud for the pink party. Former minister and BJP candidate who quit TRS to join the saffron party won Huzurabad bypoll with a majority of 22,735 votes against TRS.
Total votes polled for BJP stood at 1,06,870 in the constituency while TRS received 82,712 votes and Congress with a meagre 3012 votes. Going by the by-election result in Telangana, it is clear that KCR’s political gimmick of introducing Dalitha Bandhu scheme in a BC Stronghold Constituency did not work in the party’s favour. It also reflects how the TRS now needs to tread carefully for the Assembly elections in 2023.
