Bellary: The Congress has pulled off a huge in the Bellary (ST) assembly constituency, seen until now as the bastion of the Reddy brothers and their close associate, BJP MP, B Sreeramulu. The party registered its first ever victory from the ore-rich constituency with its candidate, N Y Gopalakrishna romping home by a margin of 33,104 votes in the recent bypoll.
Mr Gopalakrishna won 83,906 votes as against the 50,802 polled by BJP candidate, Obalesh, much to the dismay of Mr Sreeramulu, who was banking on his personal assistant delivering a resounding win and cementing his reputation as an unbeatable leader in Bellary. However, the writing was on the wall from the very start as the Congress maintained a lead in all 15 rounds of counting. To Mr Sreeramulu's added dismay, its winning margin this bypoll is almost equal to his own in the 2013 assembly election ,when he had won from the constituency as a BSR Congress candidate.
Mr Gopalakrishna’s win is the first ever for the party from Bellary (ST) constituency formed after delimitation of assembly constituencies in 2008 as Mr Sreeramulu won all three assembly elections of 2008, 2011 and 2013 from here despite contesting on three different tickets each time , as a BJP candidate, an independent and a BSR Congress candidate .
Considering that the Valmiki strongman had managed to get a lead of about 9,000 votes from this Muslim dominated scheduled tribe reserved assembly constituency in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections as well, the present defeat is all more disappointing for him and hugely satisfying for energy minister, D K Shivakumar who was in charge of the Congress campaign and strategy.
