The BJP-backed candidate Malka Komaraiah emerged victorious in the Telangana Legislative Council elections from The Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar Teachers’ constituency spread across 15 districts.
He won the seat with a margin of more than 5,700 first preference votes against his nearest rival Vanga Mahender Reddy of the PRTU (TS).
Mr Komaraiah secured 12,959 votes while Mr Mahender Reddy got 7,182 votes at the end of the first preference vote count in Karimnagar on Monday night. Of the total 25,041 polled votes, around 897 votes were declared invalid.
In the Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar Graduates’ constituency, a significant number of 8,000 votes were declared invalid in the preliminary count of around one lakh votes till 9 p.m. on Monday. A total of 2,50,106 voters cast their ballots in the Graduates’ MLC polls on February 27 sealing the fate of 56 candidates.
The sorting of another 1.50 lakh ballots was under way when the reports last came in. Most of the invalid votes were on account of wrong markings in the ballot papers, sources said.
Several ballots were found invalid due to marking of preferences by several voters in words instead of in figures leaving the contesting candidates perplexed over the ‘high number’ of invalid votes.
Some of the candidates attributed it to lack of proper awareness among the voters, mainly young graduates about the method of exercising their franchise in the preferential voting system.
The counting process is likely to take another 24 hours before the final result is formally announced.
Published – March 04, 2025 05:12 am IST
