TRS rebel candidate Korukanti Chander Patel has won in Ramagundam by a margin of 26,419 votes. He received 61,400 votes against the 34,981 votes of TRS’ S. Satyanarayana.
The constituency was in the news in the days leading to the election. There has been open resentment by prominent party members against the allocation of party ticket to the sitting legislator Mr. Satyanarayana. Mr. Patel, along with former Mayor Konkati Laxminarayana, former Deputy Mayor Saganti Shankar, Ramagundam ZPTC member Sandhya Rani and others, had opposed the move and even vowed to defeat Satyanarayana. Many supporters of the group had made suicide bids as well.
This is not the first time that Mr. Patel has been passed over for the party ticket — in 2014, he had wanted to contest as the TRS candidate, but was denied a chance. Instead the party had opted to field two-time MLA Mr. Satyanarayana who joined the TRS in 2011.
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Mr. Patel’s rebellion is a part of the larger trend seen in Telangana in which many party members – both of Congress and TRS – had expressed open resentment with the distribution of tickets. Other rebels include Kotha Manohar Reddy in Maheswaram constituency, Pannala Harish Reddy at Kukatpally, Gajjela Nagesh at Secunderabad Cantonment, Manne Goverdhan Reddy at Khairatabad and Nakka Prabhakar Goud at Medchal.
As per reports, unlike the Congress which reached out to all the rebel members , TRS top brass did not take the effort to mollify these nominees (with the exception of Manohar Reddy to whom Minister K.T. Rama Rao had reached out) in an effort to reduce chances of cutting the vote share. This has proven to be a costly mistake for the party in that constituency.