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Hyderabad, Nov 14 (IANS) Telangana’s ruling Congress party has taken an early lead in the counting of votes for the Jubilee Hills assembly constituency in Hyderabad on Friday.
After the first two rounds, Naveen Yadav of Congress was leading by about 3,000 votes over his nearest rival, Maganti Sunita of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
At the end of the second round, Naveen Yadav got 17,874 votes, while Sunita got 14,879 votes. BJP’s Lankala Deepak Reddy finished third with just 3,475 votes.
In the first round, Congress had taken a slight lead of 47 votes, which increased to 2,995 votes in the second round.
The counting of votes was going on amid tight security arrangements at Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy Stadium in Yousufguda.
Election officials have arranged 42 tables for counting of votes and the entire process will be completed in 10 rounds.
District election officer RV Karnan said each round of counting is expected to take 40 minutes. The results are likely to be declared by 2 pm
There was 48.49 percent voting in the by-election held on November 11. A total of 1,94,631 votes were cast. Officials said 99,771 men, 94,855 women and five others cast their votes. The number of postal ballots is 101.
There are a total of 4,01,365 voters in the constituency, which includes 2,08,561 males, 1,92,779 females and 25 others.
58 candidates are in the fray in the by-election caused by the death of sitting BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath.
BRS has fielded Gopinath’s wife Sunita, who is in direct competition with Naveen Yadav of the ruling Congress party. BJP has once again fielded Lankala Deepak Reddy.
Exit polls from several leading agencies suggest that Congress is set to wrest the seat from BRS. The Congress party is expected to get 46-48 percent votes, while BRS is likely to get 41-42 percent votes. BJP can remain in third place with only 6-8 percent votes.
In 2023, BRS’s Gopinath scored a hat-trick by defeating his nearest rival Mohammed Azharuddin of the Congress Party by a margin of 16,337 votes.
The BRS candidate got 80,549 votes while Azharuddin got 64,212 votes. BJP’s Deepak Reddy stood third with 25,866 votes. AIMIM’s Farazuddin finished fourth with just 7,848 votes.
This time AIMIM led by Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi supported the Congress candidate.
–IANS
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