NELLORE: YSR Congress nominee for Tirupati Lok Sabha by-poll, Maddila Gurumoorthy has won the temple-town seat with a thumping majority of 2,71,592 votes in results declared late on Sunday evening.
While Gurumoorthy secured 6,26,108 votes, his nearest Telugu Desam rival Panabaka Lakshmi bagged 3,54,516 votes.
BJP nominee and former Karnataka chief secretary K. Rathna Prabha could get only 57,080 votes while Congress nominee and former MP Chinta Mohan ended up with mere 9,585 votes, as against 24,000 votes he had polled in 2019 elections.
Tirupati LS seat had fallen vacant after its sitting MP Balli Durga Prasad of YSR Congress passed away.
Gurumoorthy’s majority is nearly 40,000 votes more than those late Balli Durga Prasad polled in 2019 general elections when the latter defeated TDP’s Panabaka Laskhmi with 2,28,000 votes. The YSRC nominee’s lead started with postal ballot votes and kept increasing in all the 25 rounds of counting.
Telugu Desam Party is, however, happy that Panabaka Lakshmi polled votes beyond their expectations, getting more than 3.5 lakh votes.
Though BJP fared poorly compared to TD, the saffron party also increased its votes to 57,080 as against 16,125 it polled in 2019 election.
Returning officer K. V. N. Chakradhar Babu, who is also the Nellore district collector, handed over the winning certificate to M. Gurumoorthy of YSRC in the presence of Sullurpeta legislator Kiliveti Sanjeevaiah.
