The process for counting of votes for the recently concluded Mahabubnagar-Ranga Reddy-Hyderabad Graduates’ Constituency elections for the Telangana Legislative Council has begun as per schedule at the Saroornagar indoor stadium in L.B. Nagar on Wednesday.
At about 7 a.m., the strong rooms where the ballot boxes had been kept were opened in the presence of the Returning Officer Priyanka Ala, Election Observer Harpreet Singh, candidates and their agents, and the boxes were brought out and unlocked. GHMC Commissioner and Election Officer D.S. Lokesh Kumar too was present at the counting venue monitoring the arrangements, a statement from GHMC informed.
At about 8 a.m., postal ballots were opened, and valid votes were separated from the invalid, before they were mixed with the rest of the ballots. Then began the lengthy process of sorting the 3,57,354 ballot papers into bundles of 25 each. By 7 p.m., bundling of ballots from about 500 polling stations could be completed, and it was well past 9 p.m. before the remaining were sorted.
After the bundling was completed, valid votes from each bundle were separated, before the first preference votes for each candidate were begun to be counted after around 11 p.m. Counting staff worked in three shifts to facilitate continuous process. A total of 448 officials were deployed as counting and supervising officers, and micro observers. Eight halls with one Assistant Returning Officer monitoring each hall were allotted for counting. Each hall had seven tables where counting was taken up.
First round
Nalgonda Staff Reporter adds: Counting of 3,86,320 ballot papers (76.41 voter turnout of 5,05,565 registered votes) in the Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Graduates’ MLC poll is under way at the State Warehousing Corporation godowns in Nalgonda town.
Returning Officer and District Collector Prashant J. Patil declared the process open at 8 a.m. amid representatives of various political parties and independent candidates on Wednesday. The strong rooms were opened to take the 731 ballot boxes to the counting halls. A total of 56 tables, with seven tables in eight halls, were organised for the manual counting. Each table is headed by a supervisor, an assistant supervisor and three counting staff.
In the round-the-clock exercise, bundling of the ballot papers was the day-long process on day one. Each set of 25 ballot papers was made into a bundle, for later distribution of per-thousand ballot papers to each table.
And hence, for one round will achieve a counting of 56,000 votes on 56 tables.
At about 4.30 p.m., bundling of the sets was completed and officials initiated the segregation of votes, as valid and invalid. And at about 7 p.m., after a brief break the counting was taken up. It was estimated that the result of the first round would be available post 11 p.m. A total of 4,000 counting staff are on shift-wise duty with a police force of about a thousand officials. The entire campus is kept on electronic surveillance with 90 CCTVs.