TRS-backed Telangana Progressive Teacher Union (TPTU) candidate Katepalli Janardhan Reddy won the election to Legislative Council from the Teachers constituency representing Hyderabad - Ranga Reddy and Mahabubnagar late on Wednesday evening. He defeated his nearest rival with a margin of over 4,000 votes.
The second preference votes of the seventh candidate were being transferred to the highest-voted candidate when The Hindu contacted Chief Electoral Officer Bhanwarlal around 9.30 p.m. He said the votes of three more candidates would be transferred after that.
In the counting of first preference votes, none of the 10 candidates secured the magic figure of 50% of polled votes plus one more vote to win. Therefore, the counting of second preference votes was taken up and six candidates eliminated from the process till the seventh one was considered. A total of 19,338 votes were considered for counting. There were 48 votes in the ‘None Of The Above’ (NOTA) category and 242 votes were rejected, leaving 9,670 votes as the winning figure. Mr. Reddy bagged 9,734 after votes of the remaining three candidates were also transferred.
The nearest rival, P. Manik Reddy of the United Teachers Front secured just over 5,000 votes.
