Winners make it to T-history

There was a pall of gloom at Gandhi Bhavan, the Congress party headquarters here on Friday as the byelection results clearly signalled the rout of the party from the Telangana region.

 All major Congress leaders were conspicuous by their absence from the party office on Friday, while the results from the counting stations came in bits and pieces indicating Telangana Rashtra Samithi as the undisputed leader.

 The party's star campaigner and PCC chief D Srinivas was steadily losing to BJP nominee Lakshminarayana by over 26, 360 votes in Nizamabad-urban constituency, when party MP Madhu Yakshi expressed the hope that DS may still emerge winner in the last round of counting as the minorities might come to the rescue of the national party.

 Meanwhile, Chennamaneni Ramesh of Trs has been declared winner from Vemulawada constituency, Koppula Eshwar (Trs) from Dharmapuri with a majority of 42,000 votes and Harish Rao from Siddipet with 95, 850 votes.

 However, Aravind Reddy (Trs) was leading by over 31, 400 votes in Mancherial after the seventh round of counting. Trs was also leading by 22,300 votes in Vemulawada and by over 2500 votes in Yellareddy constituency.

 The results of five constituencies, where the elections were conducted by ballot papers, are expected by evening. Whoever wins, will claim that they are the real fighters for the Telangana state.