Nellore: The exit polls don’t seem to be working this elections. In Nellore district, there was a large turnout of women voters. But despite the many prodding and probing, most women voters remained mum when asked on their return, about who was their preferred candidate. This strange silence is causing the jitters to the leaders of main political parties.
So far, there is not even a hint about which party is being favoured, unlike in the past. Voters have become far too discreet and the reason for this, analyse strategists, is not their sudden attack of bashfulness, but fear that disclosure will bring about the wrath of the party leaders on them, as they had taken cash from every party that had come over to buy their votes.
A political analyst said that TD had reportedly distributed Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 per vote while the YSRC had reportedly given Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 per vote in most of the constituencies.
The eerie quietude is unnerving both YSRC and TD. Voters in Atmakur, Kovur, Sarvepalli and Nellore City said there are equal chances of main contestants to bag the seat.
As reported by Deccan Chronicle a few days back, voters in several assembly constituencies under Nellore Lok Sabha constituency cast their assembly vote to one party and parliament vote to another party. Several voters inclu-ding a first time voter confirmed this cross voting.
“We have preferred YSRC for assembly and TD for Parliament because the latter belongs to this area and he lost narrowly to YSRC when he contested for Kavali seat in 2014,” a young woman in Kavali said hinting about the sympathy factor to TD nominee for Nellore parliament seat, Mr Beeda Masthan Rao.
Sources in YSRC said, their parliament nominee Mr Adala Prabhakar Re-ddy will also stand to gain from cross voting and bag more votes than YSRC As-sembly candidates. They recalled that Mr Prabha-kar Reddy had managed to bag more votes than the TD nominees for Assembly seats because of cross voting when he had contested for Nellore Lok Sabha segment on behalf of the TD against YSRC nominee Mr Mekapati Rajamohan Reddy in 2014.
In fact, Mr Rajmohan Re-ddy had secured 2.90 lakh votes’ majority against Co-ngress nominee T. Subba-rami Reddy when he contested with a YSRC ticket in the byelection to Nello-re Parliament seat in 2012.
However Mr Rajamohan Reddy was forced to rem-ain content with 13,477 vo-tes majority because of cr-oss voting in favour of Mr Prabhakar Reddy in 2014.
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