Over 90% polling was recorded in the Council elections from the teachers’ constituency. The proceedings were webcast by IIIT students from across the district on Thursday.
Polling picked up after a dull start in the graduates’ constituency and about 55% of the 77,124 voters exercised their franchise. TDP MLC Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy and District Collector and District Election Officer Sujata Sharma were among the early voters. It was a Herculean task for the district officials to arrange for the webcast of the proceedings live from all the 160 polling stations as over a score of them was close to the Nallamalla forests and Internet connectivity was ensured only at the eleventh hour much against odds. The BSNL, Transco and other officials worked overtime to ensure that over 20 polling stations in the Markapur division were networked on poll eve and the testing was done burning midnight oil.
Confident of win
The sitting Progressive Democratic Front MLCs, Vitapu Balasubrahmanyam and Yandapalli Srinivasulu Reddy, who are backed by the YSR Congress and the Left parties, maintained that they would sail through comfortably at the hustings with the graduates and teachers, whose cause they had been espousing in the Legislative Council, backing them up fully.
With prestige at stake, Transport Minister Sidda Raghava Rao and Ongole MLA D. Janardhana Rao went round the city overseeing the turnout in the elections.
