The counting of votes for the Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Teachers’ MLC elections will begin at 8 AM on Monday at the counting center in Arjalabavi, Nalgonda. Before the counting starts, the strong room will be opened at 7 AM in the presence of candidates and their agents.
A total of 24,139 votes were cast in the election. The counting process will take place at 25 tables, with each table having a counting supervisor, a micro observer, and two counting assistants. Additionally, 20% of the staff will be on standby. In total, 150 staff members will be directly involved in counting, while 200 others will assist, bringing the total workforce to 350. To ensure security, 250 police personnel will be deployed for the counting process.
The vote counting will be conducted in three stages. In the first stage, Returning Officers (ROs) will take out the ballot boxes from the strong room and place them on the counting tables. Each RO will oversee five tables. The counting staff will show the ballot boxes to the counting agents to check the seals. Once verified, the boxes will be opened, and the ballot papers will be placed in trays. The ballot papers will be checked using Form-16. After verification, 25 ballots will be bundled together and sent to the tabulation team. The ballot papers will then be mixed properly. This process will be conducted in eight batches, covering 200 polling stations.
In the second stage, the drum in-charges will distribute 1,000 ballot papers per table for counting. During the first round, only priority votes will be counted separately for each candidate. Valid and invalid votes will also be identified. After the first round, the ballot papers will be bundled into sets of 25 for each candidate and sent for verification. Once verified, the papers will be sorted by candidate at all 25 tables.
In the final step, the sorted ballots will be placed into the respective candidates’ main parcel covers. Any invalid votes will be stored separately in a designated cover.
Meanwhile, District Collector Ila Tripathi announced that the Prajavani program had to be canceled because all district officials would be engaged in the vote-counting process. The program will resume as usual next Monday.
