GHMC elections: Repoll in 36 booths, results to be delayed

Hyderabad: Due to repolling ordered in 36 polling booths of Purana Pul (Ward 52), counting of votes for the GHMC elections will be delayed on Friday.

The ward was hit by violence on polling day when MIM workers attacked Congress leaders.

The 36 presiding officers in their report to the State Election Commission had mentioned about disturbances while voting towards the end of the day, at the same time when the violence erupted.

Purana Pul has 34,413 voters. Repolling will begin at 7 am and end at 3 pm on Friday and the counting will be done on the same day.

Instead of 8 am as had been announced earlier, overall counting of the remaining 149 GHMC wards will start from 3 pm on Friday.

The Telangana State Election Commission ordered the repoll after receiving complaints of rigging by political parties during polling on February 2. The decision was taken considering the demand of various political parties who alleged high-handedness by MIM supporters.

Results after SEC clearance: Congress
B. Janardhan Reddy, election authority, GHMC said, “Webcasting has been arranged in all the 36 polling stations. The SEC has given directions that officials should not ask for voter slips from the voters. Markings will be made on the left hand middle finger.”

It will take around four hours for the results to be declared; 5,626 staff will be counting the votes.

In the 150 divisions, 45.27 per cent voters had turned out to exercise their franchise — 33,60,543 voters out 74,23,980.

Meanwhile, Congress leader Marri Shashidhar Reddy said that the results should be declared only after clearance from the SEC. “The ruling TRS leadership will pressurise the returning officers to hastily declare the TRS candidates elected even if they do not actually secure a majority, especially in close contests. For this purpose a separate cell of the TRS has been given the responsibility of closely monitoring the counting and pressurising the ROs to declare TRS candidates elected even if they do not secure a majority. Results where the margin is close should be withheld and declared only after proper verification,” said Mr Reddy.