As expected, ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi successfully bagged all the three Rajya Sabha seats from the state, elections for which were held on Friday. The counting took place an hour later.While Joginipalli Santosh and Badugula Lingaiah Yadav got 32 votes each, another TRS candidate Banda Prakash Mudiraj got 33 votes.
The minimum number of first preference votes required for a candidate to get elected to the Rajya Sabha from Telangana is 30.On the other hand, Congress party candidate, former Union minister P Balram Naik could get only 10 votes.
The party, despite knowing that it lacks adequate strength in the assembly, fielded Naik only to see that the TRS should not walk away the RS seats without any contest.
In all, 108 MLAs in the 119-member Telangana assembly cast their votes on Friday.The TRS originally had only 63 MLAs and later won two more seats in the by-elections.
However, in the last four years, its strength went up to 90, because of defection of 12 Telugu Desam Party MLAs, seven Congress MLAs, two BSP MLAs, three YSRC MLAs and one CPI MLA. The MIM, which has seven MLAs in the assembly also supported the TRS.
The Bharatiya Janata Party which has five MLAs, the TDP having two MLAs and lone CPI (M) MLA stayed away from voting.TDP MLA A Revanth Reddy, who defected to the Congress party, also did not cast his vote, saying he had submitted his resignation to the assembly membership.
Two Congress MLAs – Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and S A Sampath Kumar – could not cast their votes because of their expulsion from the assembly for their alleged unruly behaviour in the assembly on March 12, when Governor E S L Narasimhan was addressing the joint session of the assembly and council on the commencement of the budget session.
The two MLAs challenged their expulsion in the high court later. The court, which ordered a stay on notifying their vacancies by the Election Commission for six weeks, did not pass any orders on their right to vote in the Rajya Sabha elections.
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