TRS wins Palair seat in impressive fashion
CPI-M candidate P. Sudharshan came in third, polling 15,538 votes, about 29,000 votes less than in the 2014 election.
Khammam: The ruling TRS continued victory march, wresting the Palair Assembly constituency from the Congress in impressive fashion in the bypoll held on May 16.
TRS candidate Tummala Nageswara Rao trounced the Congress candidate Sucharita Reddy by a massive margin of 45,682 votes, securing 94,940 votes.
Ms Reddy bagged 49,258 votes.
CPI-M candidate P. Sudharshan came in third, polling 15,538 votes, about 29,000 votes less than in the 2014 election. Of the 12 Independents, all but two polled less than 1,000 votes.
Except Ms Reddy, all the other candidates, including Mr Sudarshan, lost their security deposits since they failed to get one-sixth of the polled votes. Mr Nageswara Rao led in every round of counting and was leading by 5,300 votes in the first round itself. He led in all the mandals, including Tirumalayapalem, Kusumanchi, Khammam Rural and Nelkondapalli.
Interestingly, about 2,785 of the 1,71074 voters opted for NOTA. The CPI- (ML) New Democracy-Chandranna group had asked the cadre to opt for NOTA. Of the 14 postal ballots, one was rejected. Tummala secured seven votes in postal ballots and Congress candidate got six votes.
Jajula Bhaskar, an Independent candidate bagged 3,578 votes followed by another Independent S. Rammoorthy with 2,348 votes. Nakirikanti Jeevan Sagar, an Independent candidate secured the lowest 211 votes.