SIDDIPET: It was like watching an IPL T20 cricket match with the match poised to go either way towards the end. Right from the word go, as results of the Dubbak assembly by-election rounds started pouring in after counting started at 8 am at Indur Engineering College at Siddipet, it generated a huge interest.
All the action was happening at two places in Siddipet. The BJP office and the residence of finance minister and Siddipet legislator T Harish Rao. At the BJP office, it was a packed house as the entire office was filled with supporters who clapped every time Raghunandan Rao got a lead. When the TRS seemed to steal a march occasionally, the mood was low but optimism was high that Rao would bounce back in the next round.
There was a TV set in the open space in front of Harish Rao’s house where hundreds of TRS supporters were glued to it. “There was no iota of doubt that our candidate would not win. Solipeta Ramalinga Reddy did a lot for a constituency and therefore his widow’s win was a foregone conclusion,” a supporter said. “This is tense but we will sail through,” a TRS supporter said. Despite the excitement, TRS candidate Solipeta Sujatha falling behind Raghunandan left the TRS cadres crestfallen.
In the first five rounds when the BJP candidate was leading, it was dismissed as votes having come from BJP stronghold areas of Dubbak town and mandal. The only saving grace in Dubbak mandal was that Sujatha, who hails from Chittapur village, polled more votes than the BJP candidate. In the sixth and seven round, the TRS seemed to be on the way to recovery. But after that, the BJP still nosed ahead. Subsequently, the TRS appeared as if it was well on its way to victory but the BJP came right into the game in the 22nd and 23rd rounds and winning the election. In the final tally, the BJP got 62,772 votes, the TRS candidate got 61,302 votes and Congress candidate got 21,819 votes from the total of 1,62,516 votes.
The rest of the votes were divided among 21 other candidates who were either independents or belonged to other parties. NOTA option got 552 votes. Among the independents, Bandaru Nagaraju polled 3,489 votes — the highest among the independents.