TDP retains Giddalur, Badvel seats

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, FEB. 23. The Telugu Desam retained its seats at Giddalur and Badvel by improved margins in the byelections held on Monday, with the Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, acknowledging that people voted for the ruling party despite some hard decisions because they knew that the Government was sincere.

The Leader of the Congress Legislature Party, Dr. Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, however, attributed the win to ``rigging, booth-capturing and misuse of official machinery''.

The byelections were necessitated by the death of Pidathala Vijayakumar Reddy and Bujivemula Veera Reddy, the Minister. Ms. Sai Kalpana Reddy, wife of Vijayakumar, won the Giddalur seat, defeating the Congress nominee, Mr. Peera Reddy, by a margin of 25,098 votes while her husband had won the seat in 1999 general election by a narrow margin of 3,000 votes. At Badvel, Ms. Vijayamma, daughter of Veera Reddy, defeated Dr. V. Sivaramakrishna Rao (Congress I) by 19,375 votes while her father won by only 9,000 votes in 1999.

The APCC president, Mr. M. Sathyanarayana Rao, described the byelections as a ``referendum'' on the TDP Government, asserting that the Congress would win because of the distress the farmers faced without remunerative prices for produce and increase in power tariff last year, but the TDP registered facile wins.

The Congress (I) brought in 30 MLAs in Badvel, wanting to make them polling agents, but the Election Commission prohibited anyone having a police security from functioning as an agent.

A writ petition in the High Court filed by the Congress candidate at Badvel challenging this order was dismissed yesterday.

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Section  : Southern States
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