Five TRS candidates elected to council

Hyderabad: The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi bagged five of the six seats in the State Legislative Council for which the election was held on Monday. The main opposition party- Congress managed to win a lone seat while the Telugu Desam Party, which got thoroughly exposed with the arrest of its politburo member A Revanth Reddy for his bid to buy the support of a nominated MLA, drew a blank. High drama marked the counting of votes which followed the polling, but the outcome, as expected had no big surprises except for the winning of fifth seat by TRS, despite the fact that it was falling short on numbers, thanks to the meticulous planning by the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

Telangana Rashtra Samithi candidates deputy chief minister K Srihari, Roads and Building minister T Nageswar Rao, former vice chairman of the Council N Vidyasagar Rao, former MP from Warangal B Venkateswarlu and former MLC B Yadava Reddy have won the election. Congress candidate and former legislator A Lalitha emerged victorious. V Narender Reddy, backed by the Telugu Desam and BJP was the lone loser.

Out of 120 members of the State Legislative Assembly, 118 have cast their vote. Most of them reached the assembly premises in groups before lining up before the polling stations to cast their votes. The polling, that went on from 10 am to 4 pm marked intensive campaign till the end. Despite all precautions taken by the individual MLAs while casting their votes, five of the votes were declared invalid while one vote was registered under



NOTA.

Out of the 112 valid votes, TRS candidates got 85 first preference votes as against 17 by the Congress nominee. The legislators of CPI and CPM have stayed away from the polling. If the pattern of voting is analysed, TRS has got 65 votes- its effective strength in the Assembly, seven from MIM, four of legislators defected from Congress, one from nominated legislator, six from Telugu Desam and two of YSR Congress. 

Congress has polled 18 votes. Besides 17 of its members, it got the support of one independent legislator. Telugu Desam party leaders were left clueless on the loss suffered by their candidate as they have an effective strength of 10 and has the support of five BJP legislators, but got only nine votes. 

The campaign witnessed several twists and turns in the past 10 days after issue of notification. Ruling TRS has surprised all by fielding fifth candidate in the fray though its strength in the Assembly would help to win only four seats.

TD legislator Revanth who was remanded to judicial custody was brought to the Assembly by the police to enable him to use his voting right as per the orders of the court. An argument of sorts has taken place between Revanth and police as the former insisted on staying in the Assembly premises as his bail plea was for hearing in the High Court. However, the police used the Assembly marshals to remove the legislator from Assembly and to shift him to Chanchalguda Central Prison.