YSR holds sway over Assembly

Congress won 157 seats while its main opponent the Telugu Desam Party won 93 seats. The two parties that bit the dust are actor-politician Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti that is fighting for a separate Telangana state. They won 18 and 10 seats respectively.
An unusual phenomenon this time round has been the defeat of about half of the Y S Rajasekhara Reddy cabinet. As many as 14 ministers and the Assembly Speaker were rejected by voters, most of them in the Telangana region. One minister scraped through with 234 votes. Nine of the 14 ministers were from Telangana, four from coastal Andhra region and one from Rayalaseema. State Congress chief D Srinivas and Speaker Suresh Reddy were among those defeated and both of them contested from Nizamabad district in Telangana.
Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy attributed his party’s victory to the fact that Congress “stood by the common man for the last five years”.