The ruling Congress party in Andhra Pradesh narrowly escaped a huge embarrassment in the elections to the 10 seats of the state legislative council on Thursday.
Legislative council Vice Chairman and a senior party leader from the Guntur district Mohammed Jani managed to scrape through in the polls despite cross voting by nine members of Legislative Assembly from the Congress, who are loyalists of rebel leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy.
Though all the 27 Congress MLAs caste their vote only 17 were in favour of Jani. All the Jagan supporters voted for Majlis Ittihad Muslameen candidate.
Outgoing member of the legislative council Altaf Haider Rizvi of the MIM secured 36 first preference votes as against the requirement of 27 votes, making it obvious that the Jagan loyalists were in his favour rather than the Congress nominee.
Initially, it appeared that Jagan had succeeded in causing embarrassment to the Congress party but ultimately the party managed to turn the tables on Jagan supporters. The episode ended up in throwing light on the real strength of Jagan. Congress leaders pointed out that only nine MLAs indulged in cross voting and they too were not sufficient to damage the party's chances.
The council polls were held on Thursday for the 10 MLC seats for which 12
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