Telangana MLC polls: Setback for Congress as BJP’s Anji Reddy wins from Graduates’ constituency

The BJP won two MLC seats -- the graduates' constituency and one teachers' while the PRTU bagged the other teachers' constituency seat

Hyderabad: In a major setback for the ruling Congress, BJP’s Chinnamalai Anji Reddy won from the Karimnagar-Medak-Adilabad-Nizamabad MLC Graduates constituency after continuing to maintain his lead in all rounds of the counting of priority votes too.

With this, the BJP has bagged two of the MLC seats – one graduates’ constituency and a teachers’ constituency – with the PRTU bagging the other teachers’ constituency after the polls held on February 27.

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Malka Komaraiah of the BJP, had won the Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar Teachers’ constituency while the PRTU’s Pingili Sripal Reddy won the Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Teachers’ constituency by defeating sitting MLC A Narsi Reddy.

Earlier, though Aniji Reddy could not get more than 50 percent votes (quota votes 1,11,672), election authorities declared his victory since he got the highest votes.

Though Congress candidate V Narender Reddy objected to the decision, officials reportedly convinced him and clarified his doubts. As no candidate got a complete majority in the first priority votes, election authorities counted the second priority votes by eliminating aspirants in ascending order.

Out of 56 candidates who contested for the graduates MLC polls, 54 candidates were eliminated. BSP candidate Prasanna Harikrishna, who stood in third place right from the first round of first-priority votes, was also eliminated at the 54th level.

With the elimination of the BSP aspirant, only Anji Reddy and Narender Reddy were left in the fray. After eliminating 53 aspirants, the BJP candidate stood in the first place with 78,635 votes while the Congress aspirant was second with 73,644 votes.

A total of 2,52,029 votes were polled. Of them 2,23,343 were found valid while 28686 turned out to be invalid votes. There were 1,11,672 quota votes.