Vijayawada: In a second shock to the ruling YSRC, the Telugu Desam nominee Panchumarthi Anuradha emerged victorious in AP Legislative Council (MLC) elections for the MLA quota seat on Thursday. Earlier, the TD had given a jolt to the ruling party by winning three Graduates MLC seats.
While the TD had a strength of only 19 MLAs, its candidate Panchumarti Anuradha won 23 votes in what was clearly a case of cross-voting.
The polling for seven MLC seats under MLAs quota started on Thursday in the assembly committee hall with the casting of vote by Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy and concluded with Nellimarla YSRC MLA Appalanaidu’s voting.
YSRC MLA Appalanaidu arrived late for the voting. He performed his son’s marriage and then came to Vijayawada frp, Visakhapatnam by air and cast his vote. The MLC elections ended with a total of 175 MLAs casting their vote. The counting process was from 5 pm followed by the announcement of the results.
Meanwhile, adviser to government (public affairs) Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy alleged that TD chief Chandrababu Naidu lured their legislators with money and hence there was cross voting. The YSRC identified the MLAs who cross-voted and affirmed that disciplinary action would follow. “We did not consider rebels Anam Venkataramana Reddy and Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy in this context. Money is the main reason behind the win of Anuradha.”
Although the TD had strength of 19 MLAs — four of its legislators had changed loyalties to YSRC — its nominee Anuradha secured the support of 23 legislators against a requirement of 22 votes.
This came as the second jolt to the YSRC as the TD recently registered a clean sweep in Graduates’ MLC elections by winning all three MLC seats. This is the fresh jolt in the MLA quota MLC elections.
The YSRC suspected that two of its rebel legislators Kotamreddy Sridhar Reddy and Anam Ramanarayana Reddy would vote for the TD and yet was confident of winning seven MLC seats. It had not expected that other legislators would also cross the line.
YSRC fielded seven MLC candidates — Jayamangala Venkataramana, Marri Rajasekhar, Chandaragiri Yesuratnam, Bommi Israel, Kola Guruvulu, Pothula Sunita and Penmetsa Varaha Venkata Suryanarayana Raju. The other candidate Panchumarti Anuradha was from the TD.
YSRC aspirants Venkataramana and Guruvulu got 21 votes each. Hence, second preferential votes were taken into consideration to select the winner. In this process, Venkataramana emerged as the winner with second preferential vote and Guruvulu lost the elections.
The MLC election winners were Jayamangala Venkataramana, Marri Rajasekhar, Chandaragiri Yesuratnam, Bommi Israel, Pothula Sunita and Penmetsa Varaha Venkata Suryanarayana Raju (all YSRC) and Panchumarti Anuradha (TD.)
The result left the ruling party leaders and cadres in a state of shock. Ministers Kottu Satyanarayana, Jogi Ramesh, Botsa Satyanarayana and others said that the party started an autopsy of MLC elections to identify the black sheep and further strengthen the party by clearing the weeds. They said the YSRC had fielded seven candidates and wanted to win all the seven; but the ruling party’s win was limited to six.
The ruling YSRC had appointed in-charges to every set of 22 MLAs, conducted mock polling several times and allotted 22 MLAs to each candidate. But shockingly Kola Guruvulu and Venkataramana received 21 votes each. Hence, the officials counted the second preferential votes which provided a win to Venkataramana.
Now, the YSRC started analyzing votes polled to Guruvulu and Venkataramana to identify the new rebels.
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