Ruling TRS grabs all 12 MLC seats in Telangana

Members of the TRS celebrating Tata Madhu’s win, in Khammam on December 14.

 

In a major victory for Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and his ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the pink party steamrolled the opposition, making a clean sweep in the biennial elections to six seats of the Legislative Council from local authority constituencies that went to the polls on December 10. The results were declared on December 14.

The electorate consisted of elected local body representatives, including elected members of urban and rural local bodies from six constituencies in five local area segments in the districts of Adilabad, Karimnagar, Khammam, Medak, and Nalgonda. Polling was held for two seats in Karimnagar district and one each in the remaining four districts. There were 26 candidates in the electoral battle and a total of 5,326 eligible voters. The Election Commission had issued notification for election to the six seats of the Legislative Council from local authority constituencies in November.

Earlier, Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter K. Kavitha and five other candidates of the TRS were declared elected unanimously to the 40-member Legislative Council where the TRS already has a comfortable majority.

Unlike elections to the Lok Sabha and the State Legislative Assemblies, ordinary voters do not participate in elections to the Legislative Council, also known as the Upper House. The elections are decided by preferential votes. The electorate gives candidates in the fray preferences in descending order; a candidate must bag 50 per cent of the first preferential votes polled plus one vote to be declared the winner. It is only when no candidate gets the magic number that second preferential votes come into consideration and are counted.

The TRS won both seats on offer in Karimnagar district, with both the candidates L. Ramana, who recently quit as the state president of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and joined the TRS, and Bhanu Prasad, elected on the basis of first preferential votes. While Ramana secured 479 votes, Bhanu Prasad garnered 585 votes. Ravinder Singh, former Karimnagar mayor who entered the fray as a TRS rebel candidate and was even backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), secured only 232 votes.

In Adilabad, the TRS candidate Dande Vithal defeated his nearest rival and independent candidate Pushpa Rani (who was backed by the opposition parties) by a huge majority of 667 votes. TRS candidate Madhava Reddy won the seat from Medak district by a majority of 524 votes.

In the seat from Nalgonda district, M.C. Koti Reddy beat his nearest rival and independent candidate K. Nagesh by a majority of 691 votes. In Khammam district, Tata Madhusudhan of TRS defeated the Congress’ candidate by a margin of 238 votes.

While the Chief Minister’s daughter Kavitha was elected from the Nizamabad constituency, the other successfully candidates elected to the Legislative Council were: Patnam Mahender Reddy, Shambipur Raju (both from Rangareddy district), Pochampally Srinivas Reddy (Warangal), Kasireddy Narayana Reddy and Kuchumalla Damodar Reddy (both from Mahabubnagar district).