- Highest percentage of voting at 88 percent
- Neck to neck between TRS and Congress
- BJP to be vote cutter for Congress
Nagarjuna Sagar: Bypoll for Sagar assembly seat recorded highest voting percentage, 88 percent, beating the levels of 2018 general elections. The previous record voters turn out was 86% in 2018, but it is 88 percent on Saturday. Generally the turnout in by-elections would be low. But in Nagarjuna Sagar, the percentage of polling was more that what it was in general election.
It’s a prestigious battle between main rivals TRS and Congress and a must win for both these parties. CM K. Chandrasekhar Rao campaigned twice for his candidate with huge public meetings, perhaps for the first time for a bypoll which proves how seriously the ruling party took the battle. On the other hand, the Congress party went on with series of road shows and door to door campaign for the win of its senior leader Jana Reddy. Jana Reddy started the show single handedly but later gained support from his colleagues in the campaign. Congress party’s version is only one, if a senior leader like Jana Reddy gets defeated, it will be humiliating for the party in the state and leaders worked very hard until the end in favour of Jana Reddy’s win.
BJP filed Lambada ( Nayak) community candidate Dr. Ravi Nayak and pinned hopes on SC, ST’s vote bank and leaders like Vijayashanthi, Babu Mohan, Central Minister Kishan Reddy, TBJP President Bandi Sanjay who toured hard for their candidate’s win.
Voting Trend: From morning 7 am on Saturday, the 17th, voters were seen at polling booths to vote and it continued up to 1 pm vigorously and again after 4 pm voters were seen in large number near polling booths. Both TRS and Congress leaders tried to mobilise voters to cast vote until last minute. It is a silent wave and difficult to predict for whom the voters voted. But the version of TRS is different. Party leaders say it was a positive wave for them as voters were satisfied with welfare schemes implemented by CM KCR. But Congress leaders opined that voters gave chance to their leader Jana Reddy and that is the reason for the increase in vote percentage.
What Prime Post observed?
There is a clear margin for Congress candidate Jana Reddy in his native place, Anumula, but in all other mandals, there is clear neck to neck or tug of war between TRS and Congress. It is very difficult to say to which party voter turned in last minute and the majority will be around five thousand whoever wins. The result of Jana Reddy mainly depends upon the vote cut by BJP’s candidate Ravi Nayak. The community in 2018 favoured Jana Reddy, but this time there is split in vote bank of community and if BJP’s candidate splits more votes for him, the win for Jana Reddy becomes difficult. At the same time, at ground level, we observed split in Yadava community too which did not favour completely the ruling party, TRS. If the cross voting by this community is large, Chance of Jana Reddy winning is more.
Final verdict: It will be another nail biting finish on counting day, May 2nd, like what happened in Dubbaka. The ruling party and experts believed that TRS party will win with majority of more than 25,000 votes, but the BJP won with a margin of 1000 votes at the end. The same scenario likely to be repeated in Sagar bypoll too on the counting day.
