Telangana MLC elections: Independent candidates demand EC to re-conduct polls

Stage protest in Karimnagar; say votes of newly enrolled graduates found invalid

KARIMNAGAR: Independent candidates who contested in the Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar MLC Graduates constituency elections have demanded the Election Commission to re-conduct the polls since a majority of the votes were found to be invalid.

Independent candidates staged a protest at a vote counting centre in the Ambedkar Indoor Stadium here on Monday. They raised slogans demanding re-election. Speaking on the occasion, independent candidate from Patancheru Shankar Rao said so far, about 35,000 graduates’ votes were found invalid and this was likely to go up to 60,000.

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Votes of newly enrolled graduates were being found invalid. New graduates cast their votes wrongly due to lack of awareness. So, the EC, which failed to educate new voters how to exercise their franchise, should cancel the election and conduct re-polling, he demanded.