Guntur: TDP candidate Kovelamudi Ravindra (Nani) is the new mayor of Guntur city. He defeated YSRCP candidate A Venkata Reddy by a margin of seven votes in the election held during the special general body meeting of the corporation on Monday.
Joint collector and returning officer Bhargava Teja declared the result and handed over the declaration to Kovelamudi Nani soon after the counting of votes. Union minister Pemmasani Chandrasekhar, legislators Alapati Rajendraprasad, Galla Madhavi, Naseer Ahmed, B Ramanjaneyulu, and NDA corporators congratulated the new mayor.
Although TDP had garnered the support of majority of corporators a month ago, YSRCP’s decision to field its candidate raised the stakes of what was expected to be a one-sided contest. While Union minister Chandrasekhar backed Nani to the hilt, some city legislators were reportedly not in favour of Nani’s candidature. However, the party high command gave the green signal to Nani and issued him the B form as the party’s nominee two days ago. Without wasting any time, Nani filed his nomination for the post on Saturday.
Meanwhile, YSRCP issued a whip to its corporators, asking them to exercise their franchise only in favour of the candidate nominated by the party. After several rounds of discussions, YSRCP named A Venkata Reddy as its candidate for the mayor’s post on Monday morning, just before the polling.
As many as 54 elected members and seven ex-officio members attended the special general body meeting to elect the new mayor. While Nani got 34 votes, Venkata Reddy got 27. After counting the votes manually, the joint collector declared him as the winner and administered the oath to him.
It’s after two decades that TDP has reclaimed the top post in GMC. While the party won the mayor’s post for two terms in the past through direct election, it captured the top post for the third term on Monday with the support of YSRCP’s turncoat corporators. TDP won just nine seats in the house of 57 members when GMC elections were held in 2021. However, about 18 YSRCP corporators, including deputy mayor Sk Sajeela, switched sides to TDP after NDA came to power in the state.
