MLC bypolls: Congress leads in Telangana

Counting of second preference votes, initiated on Thursday night, persisted into Friday.

Hyderabad: Congress candidate Chintapandu Naveen alias Teenmaar Mallanna maintained a lead as the counting of votes in the Telangana Legislative Council Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Graduates’ Constituency by-election continued for the third consecutive day on Friday.

The process of counting second preference votes, which began on Thursday night, continued on Friday.

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So far 33 candidates have been eliminated from the contest during the counting of second preference votes.

In the second preference vote, Teenmaar Mallanna was ahead with 397 votes against his nearest rival Rakesh Reddy of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), who secured 266 votes. BJP candidate Premender Reddy was in third place with 173 votes. Independent candidate Ashok had polled 69 votes.

At the end of the counting of first preference votes, the Congress candidate was leading by 18,565 votes.

Mallanna polled 1,22,813 votes while Rakesh Reddy secured 1,04,248 votes. Premender Reddy got 43,313 first-preference votes.

Since Mallanna had not secured 50 per cent of the total votes polled, the second preference votes were taken up for counting.

Alleging that some discrepancies occurred during the counting of first preference votes in the third round, the BRS candidate urged the Election Commission to ensure smooth conduct of the counting process in a transparent manner.

About 2,800 election staff are working in shifts to count 3,36,013 votes at the counting centre in Nalgonda.

In the by-election held on May 27, as many as 72.44 per cent of voters had cast their votes.

The vacancy arose after Palla Rajeshwar Reddy of BRS resigned following his election to the Assembly from the Jangaon constituency in the Assembly elections held in November 2023. He was elected as MLC in the election held in 2021.

Unlike in the recent Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, ballot papers were used in this by-election due to the preferential voting system.