On the expected lines, the last day of filing of nominations witnessed huge rush with candidates from different political parties as well as aspirants making a beeline to the offices of the respective returning officers to file their nominations.
The rush of nominations could be seen from the fact that the election officials continued sorting out nominations till late evening. As many as 231 nominations were received from the seven constituencies in Ranga Reddy district indicating significant increase in the numbers.
According to Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar, the number of nominations reached 3,000 and information is yet to come from 23 constituencies. The number indicates that more than 1,600 candidates filed their nominations on Monday alone while the total number of nominations received in five days since the commencement of the process on Nov. 12 was 1,497.
In all, 2,087 nominations were received on Monday alone with Independents and others occupying a major share of 1,571. As many as 116 aspirants/contestants of the TRS filed their nominations on Monday while the number was equally high from the Congress and the BJP. Being an auspicious day in the month of Kartika, 135 nominations have been filed on behalf of the Congress and the number was 128 in respect of the BJP. The TDP made sure that there is not much of dissidence as could be seen from only 20 nominations filed from the party candidates.
The week-long process for filing nominations started on a sedate note on November 12 but picked pace after November 14, the day when caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao filed his papers from Gajwel assembly constituency. Heavy rush was witnessed at the offices of returning officers on Monday with several candidates filing their papers.
Prominent among those who filed nominations till this afternoon are, Ministers in the caretaker government Eatala Rajender, K.T. Rama Rao, Tummala Nageswara Rao, Jupally Krishna Rao, G. Jagadish Reddy and T. Srinivas Yadav, Opposition leader in the dissolved Assembly K. Jana Reddy, TPCC working president A. Revanth Reddy, senior Congress leader D.K. Aruna, senior TDP leader Nama Nageswara Rao, CPI leader Chada Venkat Reddy and BC Welfare Association president R. Krishnaiah who was the last minute choice of the Congress from Miryalaguda constituency.
Schedule
The election authorities will take up scrutiny of nominations on Tuesday and this will be followed by withdrawal of nominations for two days November 21 and 22. The campaign for election will come to a close on December 5 evening and polling will be held on December 7 along with Rajasthan. Counting of votes for the five States where assembly elections are being held will be taken up on December 11.
Even as the filing of nominations ended on Monday, the election authority, the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, has released the second supplement of the electors list including the names of those who submitted applications for enrolment after publication of final roll on October 12. The total voter strength in the State had gone up from 2.73 crore of the final list to 2.81 crore after publication of the supplementary list showing an increase of 7.46 lakh.
EC approval sought
With the significant rise in the number of electors, the election authority had secured approval of the Election Commission for setting up 222 auxiliary polling stations taking the total number of polling stations to 32,796 from the 32,574 finalised after elaborate exercise on rationalisation of the polling stations.
