The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) swept the bye-elections to Nagarjuna Sagar Assembly constituency, where the counting of votes began on Sunday morning. TRS’s Nomula Bhagath captured the Nagarjuna Sagar seat with a total of 87,254 votes and won by a margin of 18,449 votes over Congress candidate K Jana Reddy. BJP's Ravi Nayak got 7,150 votes.
The TRS cadres started celebrating early in the day soon after witnessing Nomula Bhagath’s lead in the initial rounds. For TRS, this is the third bye-election in its second tenure followed by Huzurnagar, Dubbaka.
The bye-election was necessitated by the sudden demise of sitting TRS MLA Nomula Narsaiah. Despite being a bye-election, it attracted a lot of attention as it came after the debacle in Dubbaka bye-poll where BJP won.
Nomula Bhagath, who is a practicing lawyer, was chosen by TRS party chief K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR). After a bitter experience in Dubbaka and Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections, top leaders, MLAs, ministers and social media teams had set up camp in the Nagarjuna Sagar constituency to reach out to the people.
Former Minister K Jana Reddy of the Congress and Dr Ravi Nayak from the BJP were in the fray, besides 39 other candidates. Jana Reddy had lost from the same constituency in 2018.
Though it initially appeared like a triangular fight, the counting trends soon showed that it was a direct contest between the TRS and Congress. The result has come as a setback for the BJP as it lost its deposit, despite claiming to be an alternative to the TRS.
Election Commission officials said that as many as 24 rounds of counting took place. The constituency went for polls on April 17 and saw 86.8% polling across 346 polling stations.
Adhering to COVID-19 protocol, authorities conducted Rapid Antigen Tests on the staff, counting agents and media persons before allowing them into the counting centre.