By afternoon, it was all clear that the ruling YSRCP has got an undeniable upperhand in the Tirupati by-election. In the first two to three hours itself, thousands of outsiders came out on the roads and formed lines in front of the polling stations. It was apparently too late by the time the leaders of the TDP, the BJP and the Congress woke up to the reality. Left with no choice, the Opposition leaders began demanding repoll.

BJP nominee and retired IAS officer Ratna Prabha even staged a dharna in front of the police station. She demanded cancellation of today’s by-election since a large number of fake voters came and voted for the ruling YCP candidate. TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu and Congress AP chief Sailajanath have also made similar demands. But BJP AP chief Veerraju has not made any comment so far while his party local leaders made some noise on this front. Ever since Pawan Kalyan was down with the virus, the Jana Sena leaders almost fell silent on the bypoll.

Some Opposition leaders were going on record that it would be no wonder if the YCP nominee gets more than 3 lakh majority going by today’s violations. They say that there were hundreds of cases in Tirupati alone where the genuine voters found out at the polling booths that their votes were already cast.