GHMC Polls: High Court gives nod for results in Neredmet

The State Election Commission can treat all the votes with different marks too as valid as the votes also convey the intention of the voter, the court noted.

Hyderabad: Telangana High Court on Monday cleared hurdle for taking up counting of votes for the Neredmet division of GHMC, polls for which were held last week. The counting of 544 ballot papers was stopped after a BJP contestant from Puranapul K Surendar and one K Anthony Reddy questioned the clarification order issued by the State Election Commission on use of mark other than the arrow cross mark supplied by the commission to cast votes.

Justice A Abhishek Reddy of the High Court dismissed the petition on Monday. Senior counsel D Prakash Reddy, who appeared for the petitioners, argued that they were seeking remedy to avail judicial review in the matter seeking counting of the votes without the arrow cross/swastik mark. Earlier, the court had directed the commission to keep the disputed ballot papers in safe custody along with other ballot papers. The main ground of challenge by the petitioners was that letter issued by the Telangana State Election Commission did not make it clear as to what the Election Commissioner meant by “the distinguished mark” when there was a fixed procedure for marking the ballot papers with the ‘Arrow Cross Mark’ provided by the Returning Officers.

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Senior Counsel G Vidyasagar who appeared for Telangana State Election Commission pointed out that the clarification had to be issued as in some of the polling stations the distinguished mark supplied by the State Election Commission was different from the regular one and immediately, after noticing the same, they were changed. However, by that time some people had already cast their votes. After hearing the arguments of the petitioners as well as the Telangana State Election Commission, Justice Abhishek Reddy directed the commission to count the 544 votes.

 

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