Telangana: TRS comes out on top in Munugode bypoll

Hyderabad: The ruling TRS in Telangana on Sunday won the high-stakes bypoll to Munugode Assembly constituency in the face of a spirited challenge from the BJP.

In the keenly-fought byelection, TRS candidate Koosukuntla Prabhakar Reddy won the seat by a margin of (excluding postal ballot) 10,113 votes against his nearest BJP rival Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy, election officials said.

After completion of the 15 rounds of counting, the TRS candidate got 96,598 votes, while the BJP nominee secured 86,485 votes.

In a setback to the Congress, party candidate Palvai Sravanthi, who obtained 23,864 votes, lost the security deposit.

The byelection was necessitated by the resignation of Raj Gopal Reddy who had quit Congress and joined the BJP in August. He sought re-election on BJP ticket.

The bypoll assumed immense political significance as it was seen as a virtual semi-final ahead of next year's Legislative Assembly polls in Telangana.

The TRS, recently renamed as Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), took it as a prestige issue as a loss would have dented its plans to go national.

TRS Working President and state minister K T Rama Rao attacked the BJP, alleging that the saffron party dumped crores of rupees and got 15 companies of CRPF and 40 Income Tax teams deployed in the constituency to win the election.

Despite all its efforts, the BJP could only reduce the majority but not stop the TRS victory, he said.

State BJP president and MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar, who said his party has substantially increased its vote share compared to the last election in the constituency, asserted that people see BJP as the alternative to the ruling TRS.

He said TRS managed to win the bypoll with a margin of just over 10,000 votes though a number of TRS MLAs, ministers and other leaders had campaigned hard in Munugode.

State Congress president and MP A Revanth Reddy said that victory and failure are natural in politics.

"What is important is how sincerely one has tried," he said thanking party activists and leaders who worked for the party in Munugode "without being influenced by the inducements".