YSR Congress wins by toss of coin

Nellore: YSR Congress had the last laugh in the Zilla Parishad chairman election held here on Sunday. YSR Congress nominees for ZP chairman and vice chairman posts Bommireddy Raghavendra Reddy and P. Sirisha were elected through lucky dip as the results ended in a tie since the TD and YSRC had equal number of votes.

Although the YSRC was in a comfortable position with 31 ZPTC members as against 15 by the TD, the TD engineered defections and managed to secure the support of eight YSRC members allegedly by offering huge amount of money.

To achieve the target, TD members created ruckus in the election hall to postpone the elections twice during last 15 days.

The ruling party bigwigs used all the power at their disposal to demoralise YSRC leaders and the latter almost gave up their efforts in despair.

They rushed to the High Court seeking its intervention for a free and fair election after police filed cases against YSRC chairman nominee Bommireddy Raghavendra Reddy for alleged kidnap of a ZPTC member elected on YSRC ticket. The court ordered the police not to arrest Mr Reddy till the completion of the election and provide security to the YSRC members. The EC was told to conduct the election on July 20 without putting it off further.

As they are in need of one more YSRC member, to win the election and there was no scope of another postponement, the TD members filed a petition in the HC on Saturday to reschedule the poll as they were not informed about it.

However, the HC struck down the petition after obtaining clarification from EC Counsel. YSRC ZPTC members and MLAs were ecstatic when the slip picked up by the presiding officer N. Srikant had the name of Bommireddy Raghavendra Reddy.