Statehood wind blows through Telangana, TRS sweeps bypolls

Hyderabad, Jul 30: Sailing on the separate Telangana sentiment blowing across the region, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) was poised tonight to make a clean sweep of all the 11 Andhra Pradesh Assembly seats it contested in the July 27 by-elections while its ally, the BJP, had won the lone seat it had vacated along with the TRS candidates.TRS-BJP combine had swept all the seven seats for which results have been declared so far and is leading in five constituencies for which counting of ballot votes was in progress.Hopes of Pradesh Congress President D Srinivas to make a comeback to the State Assembly were dashed when he was defeated by BJP candidate Lakshminarayana from the Nizamabad Urban Seat.This is Mr Lakshminarayana's second victory over the PCC President within 14 months. The results leave Mr Srinivas, who had hoped to become the Deputy CM if he won, in political wilderness once again.Mr Lakshminarayana led Mr Srinivas by about 20,000 votes at the end of 11th round of counting.The first result to be declared in the morning was that of the Siddipet Constituency which TRS Candidate Harish Rao won with a record majority of 95,858 votes. The result left his opponents -- Congress, TDP and Independents, --forfeiting their security deposits.TRS Candidates Gaddam Aravind Reddy won from Mancherial, Kaveti Sammaiah from Sirpur, Harish Rao from Siddipet, Koppula Eshwar from Dharmapuri, Nallala Odelu from Chennur and Chennamaneni Ramesh from Vemulawada, while the BJP's Lakshminarayana retained his seat from Nizamabad Urban Constituency.TRS retained all the seats it had vacated to press for the formation of separate Telangana State.Mr Harish Rao, a former AP Minister, entered the record books by capturing the Siddipet Assembly Constituency by a margin of 95,858 votes, the highest in an election to the state Assembly.
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