TRS wins five seats in Telanga council

 Hyderabad, June 1: Telanga Deputy Chief Minister Kadiam Srihari and minister T. Venkateshwar Rao were among five candidates of Telanga Rashtra Samithi (TRS) elected to the state legislative council. B. Venkateshwar, N. Vidyasagar and K. Yadav Reddy of TRS were also declared elected.

Main opposition Congress’ Akula Lalitha was also elected, while the Telugu Desam Party-Bharatiya Jata Party candidate was defeated in the elections held on Monday. The election commission announced the results Monday evening.

Out of the 120-member Telanga legislative assembly, 118 lawmakers voted to elect six members to the council, while the sole members of the Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India-Marxist did not participate in the election. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, his cabinet colleagues, and opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) legislator A. Revanth Reddy, who was arrested for trying to bribe a nomited legislator, were among the legislators who exercised their franchise.

Speaker S. Madhusuda Chary was among the first to cast their votes.

The polling began at 9 a.m. and continued till 4 p.m. The counting of votes was taken up at 5 p.m. The election was marred by the dramatic arrest of Revanth on Sunday night for allegedly trying to bribe a nomited MLA to make him vote for a TDP-BJP candidate.

Revanth, who was sent to judicial custody for 14 days by a magistrate on Monday morning, was allowed to cast his vote in accordance with the magistrate’s orders. Police brought him amid tight security to the assembly building for voting, before shifting him to Chanchalguda Central Jail.

In the 120-member assembly, the TRS had sufficient numbers to win four seats but also bagged the fifth seat with the support of defectors from the opposition parties and also the backing of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) and YSR Congress party. (ians)