Telangana's ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has retained Nagarjuna Sagar Assembly seat.
Nomula Bhagat of the TRS defeated his nearest rival K. Jana Reddy of the Congress by 18,872 votes.
The TRS candidate polled 89,804 votes while Jana Reddy secured 70,932 votes. BJP's Ravi Kumar Naik could get only 7,676 votes and forfeited his deposit.
The death of Nomula Bhagat's father and sitting legislator Nomula Narasimhaiah had caused the by-election which was held on April 17.
Despite the Covid surge, the constituency had witnessed 86.18 per cent polling. Out of 2.20 lakh voters, 1.89 lakh had cast their votes.
A total of 41 candidates, including three women, were in fray.
In 2018, Nomula Narasimhaiah had won the seat by defeating Jana Reddy of Congress by about 8,000 votes. Narasimhaiah had polled 83,655 votes while Jana Reddy garnered 75,884 votes. BJP's K. Niveditha Reddy had polled only 2,675 votes.
The stakes were high for all the three major parties in the bypoll. Upbeat after winning both the seats of state Legislative Council that went to polls in March, the TRS made all out effort to retain Nagarjuna Sagar and banking on the sympathy factor by fielding Nomula Bhagat.
This was despite the TRS losing Dubbak Assembly to the BJP in November last year though the ruling party fielded S. Sujatha, widow of S. Ramalinga Reddy, whose death had necessitated the bypoll.
After the shock defeat to the BJP in Dubbak, the TRS did not take any chances in Nagarjuna Sagar. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who had not campaigned for TRS in Dubbak, addressed two public meetings.
The Congress was banking heavily on the charisma of Jana Reddy, who won the seat in 2009 and 2014.
He was earlier elected five times from Chalakurthy constituency, which became Nagarjuna Sagar in the delimitation exercise in 2009.