Vani Devi, the TRS candidate and daughter of former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, has maintained consistent lead in a neck-and-neck fight with BJP candidate N. Ramchander Rao for the Mahabubnagar-RangaReddy-Hyderabad Graduates’ constituency seat for the Telangana Legislative Council, even as the counting reached the elimination rounds on Friday.
After seven rounds of counting, which consumed the whole of Thursday, and part of Friday, the total number of valid votes stood at 3,37,039, while 21,309 ballot papers were found to be invalid.
The first preference votes for Ms. Vani Devi stood at 1,12,689, while Mr. Ramchander Rao trailed with 1,04,668 votes. K. Nageshwar, who contested as the Independent candidate, secured 53,610 votes, while G. Chinna Reddy from Congress got 31,554 votes.
The lead by Ms. Vani Devi was consistent through all rounds though the margin was not much to speak of.
After seventh and final round, the elimination process had begun. As per the procedure, candidates securing lowest number of first preference votes were eliminated, and the second preference votes polled on their ballot papers were added to the respective candidates’ kitties.
In order to win, any candidate must secure at least one vote over and above the 50% mark of the total valid ballots polled. Considering the number of valid ballots at 3,37,039, the winner’s mark is fixed at 1,68,520 votes.
Post 9 p.m., after elimination of 49 candidates from a list of 93 in ascending order of the number of first preference votes polled, Ms. Vani Devi secured 1,12,921 votes, and Mr. Ramchander Rao, 1,04,885 votes. Prof. Nageshwar polled 53,747 votes while Mr. Chinna Reddy secured 31,669 votes.
More than 3.58 lakh ballots were polled through postal and from 799 polling stations of nine districts as part of the elections, for which the process of counting began on March 17. Bundling of votes took the whole of first day, with actual counting beginning at around 11 p.m. on Wednesday.
