A few hundred votes made the difference in Andhra

Hyderabad, May 17 (IANS) A few hundred votes made the difference between the winner and loser in a sizeable number of assembly constituencies in Andhra Pradesh.

The Congress party, which retained power with a comfortable majority of 157 in the 294-member assembly, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) won at least 20 seats with a majority of less than 1,000 votes.

The Congress bagged at least 11 seats with a margin of less than 800 votes. The TDP won six seats with a victory margin of less than 900 votes. State minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah scraped through in Jangaon assembly constituency in Warangal district with 236 votes.

However, the record for the lowest margin in assembly elections was made by PRP's Sridhar Krishna Reddy, who won the Nellore City seat by only 90 votes. Chiranjeevi's party also won Vijayawada East with a margin of 187 votes.

TRS president K. Chandrasekhara Rao's son K. Taraka Rama Rao won Sircilla seat with a majority of 171 votes against a party rebel.

The highest margin of assembly victory was of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, who retained Pulivendula seat in his native Kadapa district with a 68,681 vote-margin. His nearest rival was Satish Kumar Reddy of TDP.

Kishore Chander Deo of the Congress has the distinction of winning the Lok Sabha seat with the highest margin in the state. He won the newly created Araku seat by 192,444 votes, defeating M. Babu Rao of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).

In 2004, Deo was elected from Parvathipuram while Babu Rao had won from Bhadrachalam. Both the constituencies were scrapped in the delimitation.

YSR's son Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy won with the second highest margin. Making his debut in electoral politics, Jaganmohan won Kadapa Lok Sabha seat with a thumping majority of 178,846 votes, defeating his nearest rival P. Srikant Reddy of the TDP.

The lowest margin of victory was in Narsaraopet Lok Sabha constituency where Venugopal Reddy of the TDP was elected with a majority of 1,607 votes.

L. Rajagopal of Congress retained Vijayawada Lok Sabha seat with a margin of 12,712 seats.

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