With 47.3 per cent of the votes polled, the YSR Congress emerged as a clear alternative to the Congress. The bypolls were spread over half the districts (seven coastal districts, all four in Rayalaseema and one in Telangana) in the state and the party has now positioned itself as a prime contender for power in the 2014 elections.
Though the Congress won two seats, its candidates lost their deposits in seven. TD candidates, too, lost their deposits in five Assembly seats and in the Nellore Lok Sabha segment.
However, in terms of overall vote share, the TD got 23.34 per cent against the Congress’ 22.46 per cent; their combined vote share did not equal that of the YSRC.
The TRS just managed to scrape through in Parkal with 1,562 votes after a neck-and-neck battle with the YSRC, in spite of the pro-Telangana sentiment which the TRS usually banks on. YSRC’s Konda Surekha came a close second while the BJP and the Congress came fo-urth and fifth respectively.
While the bypoll debacle will not pose any immediate threat to the Kiran Kumar Reddy government, it will most probably lead to an exodus of MPs and MLAs from both the Congress and the TD to the YSRC. This was evident on Friday itself with TD legislator Kodali Nani putting up posters all over Gudivada congratulating Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy.
The YSRC camp has said that it has received feelers from at least five TD and a dozen Congress MLAs.
While Mr Kiran Kumar Reddy remained aloof after the results, PCC chief Botsa Satyanarayana desc-ribed the voters’ verdict as a “decision in haste”. TD chief N. Chandrababu Naidu attributed the results to the sympathy generated from Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy’s arrest.
After Friday’s results, the YSRC has 17 members in the Assembly and two in the Lok Sabha. Technically, all YSRC candidates retained their seats as they had earlier won them on Congress tickets. They had been subsequently disqualified from the party for voting against the government in a TD-sponsored no-trust motion in the Assembly.
Though Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy’s party had been put on the backfoot recently after his arrest in the illegal investments case and the pressure put by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate on him, it romped home riding on the sympathy wave generated by the whirlwind tours of Ms Vijayalakshmi and Ms Sharmila Reddy.