MLC votes to be counted today

Nalgonda: The counting of votes for the Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda Teachers’ MLC elections will commence on at the counting center located at Arjalabavi in Nalgondaat 8 am on Monday. Prior to this, at 7 am, the strong room will be opened in the presence of the candidates and their agents. A total of 24,139 votes were cast in the Teachers’ MLC elections.The counting process will take place across 25 tables. Each table will have one counting supervisor, one micro observer, and two counting assistants. Additionally, 20% reserve staff will be on standby. In total, 150 staff members will be directly involved in the counting, while another 200 personnel will assist during the process, bringing the total workforce to 350. Additionally, 250 police personnel will be deployed for counting duties.The vote counting process will be conducted in three stages.

In the first stage, the Returning Officers (ROs) will retrieve the ballot boxes along with the ballot paper accounts from the strong room and place them on the counting tables. Each RO will be responsible for five tables. Once the ballot boxes arrive from the strong room, the counting staff will present them to the counting agents to verify the integrity of the seals. After confirming the seals, the ballot boxes will be opened in front of the agents, and the ballot papers will be placed in trays. The ballot papers will be verified using Form-16. Once the tallying of ballot papers with the ballot paper account is completed, counting agents will sign off on the verification.Subsequently, 25 ballots will be bundled together. These bundles will then be sent to the tabulation team at the RO’s table for further processing. After tabulation, the ballot papers will be forwarded to the drum in-charge for proper mixing.This process will be conducted in eight batches, covering 200 polling stations (25×8=200).

In the second stage, after the initial counting, the drum in-charges will distribute 1,000 ballot papers per table for counting.During the first round, only the priority votes will be counted separately for each candidate. Valid and invalid votes will also be identified during this round. Once the first round of counting is completed, the ballot papers will be bundled into 25 sets per candidate and sent for further verification by the tabulation team.After verification at the tabulation stage, the ballot papers will be sent to the pigeonhole in-charges, where they will be sorted by candidate across all 25 tables.

After all the tables have sorted the ballot papers by candidate, the pigeonhole in-charges will place the ballots into the respective candidates’ main parcel covers. All invalid votes will be stored separately in a designated cover.

Prajavanicancelled

District Collector Ila Tripathi stated that as all district officials would be engaged in the vote-counting process for the Teacher MLC elections, the Prajavani programme had to be cancelled. The Prajavani program would be conducted as usual next Monday.