Counting for Graduates MLC election takes off

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.