Gade Srinivasulu Naidu wins in North Andhra Teachers MLC polls

Visakhapatnam: Gade Srinivasulu Naidu won the North Andhra Teachers’ MLC election with a majority of 710 votes.

The election counting process at Visakhapatnam Andhra University Engineering College began on Monday morning.

The sealed ballot boxes were shifted to the counting centre from the strong room in the presence of candidates and counting agents. About 20 tables were arranged for the counting process and 40 counting staff assigned for the purpose. Counting agents were present on behalf of the ten candidates.

Of the 20,135 votes, 19,813 votes were considered as valid votes. About 970 votes were identified as invalid ones. A candidate needs to get 10,068 first preference votes to win in the MLC elections. But the alliance party-supported APTF candidate Raghu Varma failed to secured required first preference votes. Srinivasulu Naidu secured 9,237 votes and Raghu Varma got 8,527 votes.

After completion of the first preference votes, District Election officials decided to proceed with the elimination process. The process of eliminating the candidate with the lowest number of votes and adding the second priority votes to the candidates were carried out. In that, Gade Srinivasulu Naidu was declared as the MLC.