80% vote has TD, YSRC guessing
There was a high voter turnout, of nearly 80 per cent, for the keenly contested Nandyal by-election in Kurnool on Wednesday, forcing the TD and the YSRC to pull out their calculators. Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwar Lal said this was the highest polling witnessed in Nandyal in two decades. Counting will be taken up at 8 am on August 28.
According to TD calculations, urban voters will favour the ruling party and the rural electorate will back the YSRC.
Sources said the TD tracked voting in urban areas and feeling that it was on the lower side earlier on, encouraged voters to turn up at the booths to extend its edge.
while the TD claimed that the large numbers indicated support for the government's developmental work in Nandyal. One notable feature was the large presence of aged persons and women voters, while fewer young voters were observed in the queues at many polling stations.
Of the nearly 2.18 lakh registered voters in Nandyal (1,07,778 of them men), 1,73,335 had cast their vote. Among these, there were 84,831 men and 88,503 women. The large turnout of women had its own impact on the poll calculations. Minister Somireddy Chandramohan Reddy was confident that the TD would win with a 10,000-vote majority. YSRC legislator G. Sreekanth Reddy believes his party will win by 10,000 votes.
There were clashes between TD and YSRC cadres in some polling booths. At the Gandhinagar polling booth it was alleged that the followers of the TD's ex-MLA from Ongole, Anne Rambabu, attacked YSRC leader Rajagopal. Some YSRC activists were injured. At YSR Nagar, SBI Colony, in Nandyal town, and in Yallur, Gospadu, and Kanala villages, rival factions hurled abuses at each other. Apart from this, no cases were registered during the voting, district superintendent of police Gopinath Jetti said. Returning officer V Prasanna Venkatesh said that all EVMs worked perfectly, without any technical glitches. The polling percentage was 79.20 per cent; 77.66 per cent voting was recorded by 5 pm and Mr Bhanwar Lal said there were still long queues outside polling booths
YSRC candidate Shilpa Mohan Reddy claimed the trend appeared to favour the YSRC despite the many hurdles placed by the government. She said the police ignored complaints that tourism minister Bhuma Akhila Priya and her sister Bhuma Naga Mounika had entered polling booths in violation of the rules.