BJP wins Dubbaka assembly seat in byelection

The result is yet to be declared officially by the Returning Officer.

With this, BJP’s strength in the state assembly rose to two.

BJP candidate M Raghunandan Rao, who unsuccessfully contested the Dubbaka Assembly Constituency in the previous elections, has won the seat in the bypoll by defeating his nearest rival Solipeta Sujatha of the ruling TRS by a margin of 1,470 votes.

Mr Rao got 62,772 votes while Sujatha polled 61,302 and Congress candidate Cheruku Srinivas Reddy, who joined the party just ahead of the bypoll, secured 21,819 votes .

The bypoll is necessitated following the death of sitting TRS MLA Solipeta Ramalinga Reddy due to health problems in August this year and the TRS has fielded his wife Solipeta Sujatha as its candidate.

The Assembly segment which was represented by Ramalinga Reddy in 2014 and again in 2018 has been a bastion of the ruling party.

Ramalinga Reddy lost the 2009 Assembly election to Mutyam Reddy of Congress by a narrow margin.

Mutyam Reddy, a senior politician polled 52,989 votes (37.18 per cent) and Ramalinga Reddy polled 50,349 votes (35.32 per cent) .

However, Ramalinga Reddy, a journalist and a separate Telangana activist turned the tide in 2014 and secured 82,234 votes accounting for 53.37 per cent of the 1,54,083 votes polled.

The sitting MLA Mutyam Reddy lost the election managing to garner only 28.75 percent of votes.

Raghunandan Rao finished a poor third and could not even touch the double digit (9.82 per cent).

TRS continued with its dominance in Dubbaka, even during the early election in 2018. Ramalinga Reddy won again by improving his earlier performance by achieving 89,299 votes that amounted to 54.36 percent of 1,64,281 votes polled.

Dubbaka segment consists of seven Mandals and as per the estimates of 2011 census, 97.8 per cent of the population is Rural and 2.2 per cent is Urban.