The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) won the by-election for Legislative Council from Mahabubnagar local bodies constituency.
Naveen Kumar Reddy of BRS emerged victorious with a majority of 109 votes over his nearest rival Manney Jeevan Reddy of Congress.
The polling was held on March 28 but the counting was postponed in view of the Model Code of Conduct for Lok Sabha elections. The counting was taken up on Sunday, a day after the last phase of Lok Sabha polls.
Out of 1,437 votes polled in the by-election, 21 were found invalid. Naveen Kumar Reddy secured 762 votes while Jeevan Reddy garnered 653 votes. Independent candidate Sudershan Goud got one vote.
The victory came as a setback for the Congress party in Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy’s home district Mahabubnagar.
Revanth Reddy himself had cast his vote in the by-election as an ex-officio member in his capacity as MLA from Kodangal constituency.
A total of 1,439 voters including municipal councillors, MPTCs, ZPTCs and ex-officio members were eligible to cast their votes.
BRS had an absolute majority in local bodies as the party almost made a clean sweep in local bodies elections in 2019.
The main opposition party had a strength of 1,039 (71 per cent), Congress 241 (16.67 per cent), BJP 119 (8.23 per cent) and others 46 (3.18 per cent). However, cross-voting was feared in view of a series of jolts received by BRS since losing power to Congress six months ago.
The by-election was necessitated after Kasireddy Narayan Reddy of the BRS resigned and successfully contested as a Congress candidate from Kalwakurthy Assembly constituency in the elections held in November 2023.
The victory in MLC by-election came as a gift for BRS on the 10th Telangana formation day.
It also came as a relief for the party, which suffered a big blow since losing power to the Congress party as several key leaders, including five MPs and three MLAs, quit the party to join Congress or BJP.
The victory also came a day after the majority of the exit polls predicted that BRS may win 0-1 seats in Lok Sabha elections.
The party had bagged nine out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019.