The BJP flag.
Credit: PTI File Photo
Hyderabad: Kamareddy, a bustling business centre, 120 km from Telangana's capital city of Hyderabad, had witnessed an interesting and epic electoral battle of sorts.
None other than BRS chief, K Chandrashekar Rao, and Telangana PCC chief, A Revanth Reddy, had locked horns with each other.
All the attention was on the Big Two. But, a candidate carved out a third corner in this fight, and defeated both KCR and Revanth. This dark horse is BJP candidate Venkata Ramana Reddy.
K Venkata Ramana Reddy won over KCR with a lead of more than 6,000 votes, while Revanth Reddy was pushed to third place.
Until the afternoon, Revanth had maintained a marginal lead over KCR and Venkata Ramana. KCR, however, had never witnessed a lead in any of the rounds. This came as a surprise because KCR has roots in Kamareddy as his maternal ancestors belong to Konapur in Kamareddy.
Revanth was always seen as an outsider by the locals.
Interestingly, Venkata Ramana has been nurturing the segment for more than a year. He is a popular face and known to be a 'people's man' and his name often came up for discussions in every nook and corner of Kamareddy.
For KCR, this was a big setback. The BRS chief had anyway fielded himself in another seat, Gajwel, as an insurance. That paid off, as KCR has retained Gajwel with a majority of 45,031 votes over his former top aide-turned-adversary, Eatala Rajender of the BJP.