Kakinada: The Telugu Desam (TD) scored a massive victory in the Kakinada Municipal Corporation elections, grabbing the civic body after a gap of 25 years, continuing the trend that began with the Nandyal Assembly bypoll last week.
The party contested 45 of the 48 wards in the city and won 32. Alliance partner BJP won three of the nine wards it contested.
Three rebel TD candidates also won the polls that were held on Friday.
The Opposition YSRC managed to get 10 divisions. At one point of time it looked like the party would not cross the double-digit mark.
The Congress which won the polls thrice in succession from 1995 to 2005 could not muster even 100 votes in each division.
The elections were held to the KMC for the first time after 2010. The TD won a total of 69,534 votes, the YSRC 50,944 and the BJP 7,813 votes. The Congress won a total of 602 votes in 48 wards, the CPI 177, CPM 78 votes, Bahujan Samaj Party 215 and independents, 19,219 votes.
Deputy CM Nimmakayala Chinarajappa attributed the win to the trust that the voters had in Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s governance and the development and welfare activities of the government. He said that the party had not expected this thumping win. He said that the people of Kakinada have not accepted YSRC chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy’s leadership.
Kakinada MLA Vanamadi Venkateswara Rao (Kondababu) said the TD government has done a lot to develop Kakinada city in the past three-and-a-half years.
