Counting down for graduate MLC election

The counting of votes for the recently concluded Mahbubnagar-Ranga Reddy-Hyderabad graduate constituency for the Telangana Legislative Council has started from Wednesday as per the schedule scheduled at Sarovarnagar Indoor Stadium in LB Nagar.

Around 7 pm, the Strong Room, where the ballot boxes were kept, opened in the presence of Returning Officer Priyanka Ala, Election Observer Harpreet Singh, candidates and their agents and the boxes were brought out and unlocked. A GHMC statement said that GHMC Commissioner and Election Officer DS Lokesh Kumar was also present at the counting venue.

At about 8 o’clock, postal ballots were opened, and the valid ballots were separated from invalid ones, before mixing them with the rest of the ballots. Then the long process of sorting the 3,57,354 ballots into 25 bundles began. By 7 pm, ballot splitting could be completed from about 500 polling stations, and the rest rang at 9 o’clock the night before it was sorted.

After bundling was completed, the valid votes of each bundle were set aside, before the counting of first preference votes for each candidate began around 11 a.m., with the counting staff facilitating a continuous process Worked in three shifts. A total of 448 officers were deployed as counting officers and supervising officers and micro-observers. Eight halls were allotted with an Assistant Returning Officer supervising each hall for counting. Each hall had seven tables where counting was done.

First round

Says Nalgonda Staff Reporter: The counting of 3,86,320 ballots (76.41 voters out of 5,05,565 registered votes) in the MLC election of Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda graduates is running in the warehouses of the State Warehousing Corporation in the city of Nalgonda.

Returning Officer and District Collector Prashant J. Patil on Wednesday declared the process open at 8 am between representatives of various political parties and independents. In the counting hall, strong rooms were opened to take 731 ballots. A total of 56 tables were placed in eight halls for manual counting. Each table is headed by a supervisor, an assistant supervisor and three counting staff.

In a round-the-clock exercise, tying the ballots was a day-long process. For the distribution of per thousand ballet papers on each table, each set of 25 ballet papers was made into a bundle.

And so, 56 tables will count on 56 tables for one round.

Around 4.30 pm, bundling of the sets was completed and the officials declared the separation of votes valid and invalid. And at around 7 pm, the counting of votes was started after a short break. It was anticipated that the results of the first round would be available after 11 pm. A total of 4,000 counting staff are on family duty with a police force of about a thousand officers. The entire complex is placed under electronic surveillance with 90 CCTVs.