HYDERABAD: TRS candidate K Meena Reddy won the Neredmet division election by defeating her nearest rival V Prasanna Naidu of BJP with a margin of 668 votes. Results of 149 GHMC divisions were declared on December 4, but counting in Neredmet was stayed by HC due to different poll marks instead of swastik on ballot papers. The State Election Commission finally took up the counting on Wednesday after HC directed it to treat all votes with different marks as valid too.
With this victory, the total number of divisions won by TRS has gone up to 56. The BJP has 48 seats in its kitty, MIM 44 and Congress 2.
Meena polled 10,330 votes, while Prasanna got 9,662 votes. Three other candidates from Congress, TDP and an independent lost their deposits.
Only 544 votes with distinguished marks on the ballot papers were counted on Wednesday. The counting of ballots with swastik was completed on December 4 itself. TRS was ahead with 505 votes when counting was stopped on December 4 as ballots with distinguished marks (544) was more than the TRS lead.
Of these 544 with distinguished marks, TRS finally got 278 votes, BJP 115, Congress 111, TDP 12, independent 3, rejected 17 and NOTA 8.
BJP candidate Prasanna, an advocate, told TOI that she would consult the party leadership on approaching the court against the decision of election officials to declare TRS candidate as the winner. “Some of the invalid votes were added to the TRS candidate and later removed after I objected. I have doubts over the entire counting process,” Prasanna said.
But election officials said the entire process of counting was kept transparent and done in front of contesting candidates or their election agents.
“If you deduct 115 distinguished marked votes of BJP from the 278 with distinguished marks polled by the TRS, the majority of the TRS will come to 163. Add this majority of distinguished votes of 163 to 505 of TRS, the total victory margin comes to 668 votes. There is no foul play,” said Narsing Rao, assistant returning officer, ward no 136, Neredmet.