Counting of votes underway for Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Graduate MLC bye-election

HYDERABAD: The counting of votes for the Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Graduate MLC by-election commenced at 8 am on Wednesday.

The votes cast at 605 polling stations are being counted at a single location, with 96 tables set up for the process. A total of 2,800 personnel are involved in the counting at the Duppalapalli State Warehousing Corporation's warehouse on the outskirts of Nalgonda town.

The counting staff collated the votes from the ballot boxes and tied the bundles to start counting first-priority votes. Officials estimate that the final result may be announced in around 36 hours. Among the 52 candidates contesting the election are Rakesh Reddy from BRS, Teenmaar Mallanna from Congress, and G Parmender Reddy from BJP.

Three-tier security has been implemented at the counting centre, with Section 144 in effect.

Votes are being counted across four halls, with 24 tables in each hall. Staff are folding 25 ballot papers into bundles, including postal ballots. The counting of first-preference votes will start after the bundling is complete. The elimination process will begin if no candidate achieves the required quota of votes in the first preference count.

The elimination process will start with the candidate who has the fewest first preference votes. The second preference votes for this candidate will then be redistributed among the remaining candidates. This process will continue until a candidate secures the winning quota of votes, at which point the counting will stop, and the winner will be declared.

With 52 candidates in contention, the elimination process is expected to be lengthy. During the last election, the elimination round alone took 44 hours. If there is no winner after counting the second-preference votes, the third-preference votes will also be counted. However, historically, third-preference votes have not been required to determine a winner.