It is a takeover that Andhra Pradesh 'chief executive officer' Chandrababu Naidu will never have dreamt of.
The Congress and its allies -- the Telengana Rashtra Samithi, Communist Party of India-Marxist and CPI -- on Tuesday bagged 226 seats in the 294-member assembly.
Congress+ | TDP+ | Others | Constituency-wise results
Naidu's Telugu Desam Party and its ally, the Bharatiya Janata Party, received a drubbing, winning only 49.
Others, including independents, have won in 19 seats.
The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party opened their accounts in the state, bagging one seat each.
The Congress, which had won 62 seats in 1999, bagged 185 on its own. The TDP got 47 seats against the 192 it had in the dissolved assembly. Its ally, the BJP, got two, down ten seats.
Following the humiliating defeat, Naidu drove to Raj Bhawan and tendered his resignation to Governor Surjit Singh Barnala.
He, however, was gracious in defeat, saying he would extend all support to the new government.
While many of his ministers lost, Naidu himself won by a huge margin in Kuppam, Congress' chief ministerial prospect Y S Rajsekhara Reddy in Pulivendla and TRS chief Chandrasekhar Rao in Siddipeta.
The Congress, which lost power to N T Rama Rao in 1994, will elect its CM on Wednesday at a meeting of the legislature party.
The party won comprehensibly in all the three regions of the state, belying Naidu's expectations of cashing in on the naxalites' bid on his life last October and a possible backlash to the TRS's separate Telengana state demand.
Naidu, who had seized power from his father-in-law in 1995, had dissolved the assembly in October one year ahead of schedule.
The fledgling TRS, headed by K Chandrasekhar Rao, made an impressive debut bagging 26 of the 42 seats it contested in Telengana.
The CPI-M and CPI also made handsome gains, winning nine and six seats respectively.
While independents won 11 seats, the Muslim Majlis secured four and the Janata Party two.
Most of the TDP ministers and the speaker of the dissolved assembly, K Pratibha Bharathi, were defeated.
Naidu, Y Ramakrishnudu (Tuni), Uma Madhav Reddy (Bhongir), T Devender Goud (Medchal) and Kothapalli Subbarayudu (Narsapuram) braved the anti-incumbency storm and retained their seats, though with reduced margins.
Revenue Minister P Ashok Gajapathi Raju tasted his first defeat since 1978 in Vizianagaram.
Other TDP heavyweights who fell by the wayside included Tammineni Sitaram (Amudalavalasa), Manikumari (Paderu), whose husband was recently killed by naxals, former Central Bureau of Investigation director K Vijayarama Rao (Khairatabad), T Srinivasa Yadav (Secunderabad), P Babu Mohan (Andole) and K Vidyadhar Rao (Chintalapudi).
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