Vangaveeti Radha wins big as Vijayawada Mayor

Janasena leader and former MLA Vangaveeti Radhakrishna won the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation elections with a landslide victory. Contesting for the post of mayor as the alliance's joint candidate, he won by a huge majority of 1,30,872 votes against his nearest rival, YSRCP candidate Rayana Bhagyalakshmi. With this victory, he will take charge as the new mayor of Vijayawada. It is noteworthy that this landslide victory was achieved on his birthday.

The counting of votes, which began on Tuesday morning, continued till Wednesday morning. According to the final results, Vangaveeti Radha got 2,65,888 votes, while Bhagyalakshmi, the former mayor, got 1,35,016 votes. Retired IPS officer A.B. Venkateswara Rao, who contested as an independent candidate with the support of the Congress and the Left parties, secured only 11,137 votes.

Along with the mayor's post, the alliance also registered a one-sided victory in the divisions of the corporation. Out of the 82 divisions for which the results were declared, the TDP-Janasena-BJP alliance won 72 seats. The YSRCP suffered a crushing defeat, winning only 8 divisions. The alliance's candidates won more than 90 percent of the seats in the city's three assembly constituencies.Vangaveeti Radha, who previously worked in the Congress, Praja Rajyam, YSRCP and TDP, joined the Jana Sena party on October 14. He contested from the mayoral post allocated to Jana Sena as part of the alliance