TRS wins all 3 MLC seats

Hyderabad: Making a clean sweep, the TRS on Monday emerged victorious by winning three Council seats in Warangal, Nalgonda and Ranga Reddy Local Authorities Constituencies.

The byelections assumed importance as the main contest was between the TRS and Congress. The Congress had in the Lok Sabha elections won three seats. The TRS, which was expecting to bag 16 out of 17 seats, had to remain content with nine.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and TRS working president KT Rama Rao congratulated the party leaders -- P Mahender Reddy who had won from Ranga Reddy district, Pochampally Srinivas Reddy from Warangal and T Chinnapa Reddy from Nalgonda.

In Warangal, Srinivas Reddy won with a majority of 825 votes against his rival. The Congress candidate E Venkat Ram Reddy secured only 23 votes and 12 votes were invalid.

In Ranga Reddy, P Mahender Reddy won with a majority of 244 votes against Congress candidate K Pratap Reddy. Nalgonda TRS candidate T Chinnapa Reddy won with a majority of 217 votes against Congress party's Komatireddy Lakshmi.

According to the TRS leaders, the party was expecting easy win in the Rangareddy and Warangal LACs but had apprehensions regarding Nalgonda LAC going by its previous result.

The party took precautionary measures like camping the elected public representatives in order to avoid any horse-trading by the Congress party leaders.

The representatives were taken out of the state and kept in resorts on outskirts of the city to ensure that there was no foul play.

The TRS leaders were camping for over a fortnight participating in mock polling exercise.

According to sources, the Congress candidate got 200 votes more than what was expected. A senior leader said that this may be because these representatives were from Congress who had joined TRS.