Jubilee Hills bypoll: Cong candidate takes clear lead over BRS rival

Hyderabad, Nov 14 (PTI) Congress candidate V Naveen Yadav was leading by about 13,000 votes over his nearest BRS rival Maganti Sunitha after the completion of five rounds of counting of votes in the by-election to Jubilee Hills assembly constituency here on Friday.

Yadav secured 50,849 votes, while the BRS nominee got 37,990 votes, as per official data.

BJP's Lankala Deepak Reddy secured 8,569 votes.

Yadav consistently maintained his lead over the BRS rival from the first round.

Congress leaders and activists celebrated as the party candidate maintained his lead. They burst crackers and distributed sweets at Gandhi Bhavan here, the headquarters of Congress in Telangana.

Telangana Ministers Ponnam Prabhakar, Vakiti Srihari and G Vivek Venkatswamy, who actively campaigned in the by-election, celebrated by distributing sweets.

Vivek Venkatswamy told PTI Videos that the Congress was lagging behind in popularity earlier but the efforts put in by the ministers and other leaders shored up party's chances of victory.

He said the BRS losing elections in a row, including 2023 assembly polls, 2024 Lok Sabha polls and MLC polls, shows that the party's Working President K T Rama Rao's leadership has failed.

Amid tight security, the counting of votes, crucial for the ruling Congress and also BRS, commenced at 8 AM.

The counting process would be completed in 10 rounds.

The officials said 48.49 per cent of votes were cast on November 11 when the polling was held. The total number of eligible voters was 4.01 lakh, while 1.94 lakh voters exercised their franchise.

The bypoll was necessitated by the death of BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath in June this year. PTI SJR SJR KH