Vijayawada: Betting on the victory and defeat of candidates has taken over Andhra Pradesh in the aftermath of the state Assembly and Lok Sabha elections on April 11.
Gamblers are placing bets on who would form govenrment, the number of seats each party will win, the fortunes of individual candidates, and their margins of victory.
The people of Krishna, Guntur, Godavari, and Visakhapatnam districts have placed the most bets. According to reports, nearly Rs 100 crore has been wagered in the past week. While bets have been placed on almost all seats the focus has been on seats like Mangala-giri, Gudivada, Gaju-waka, Bhimavaram, Visakhapatnam, Mylavaram, Chila-kaluripet and Guntur, where, among others, minister Nara Lokesh, Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan, industrialist Jayadev Galla, former CBI joint director V.V. Lakshminara-yana and former Union minister Dagg-ubati Purand-eswari are contesting.
On these seats, the odds being offered is in the range of 1:5. In Mangalagiri, where Mr Lokesh took on YSRC MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy, it is reported that the race was so tight that voters were gifted Rs 10,000 per vote besides ACs, TVs, and other gifts.
TD leaders are said to have bet Rs 1 crore that party candidate Devineni Avinash, the son of minister Devineni Uma Maheshwara Rao, would win in Gudivada.
