MLC elections: 110 illiterate voters to decide the winner
Highlights
About 110 illiterate voters, out of the total 726, are going to decide the winner of the local body MLC elections, scheduled to be held on Saturday (December 27) in Khammam district.
Khammam: About 110 illiterate voters, out of the total 726, are going to decide the winner of the local body MLC elections, scheduled to be held on Saturday (December 27) in Khammam district.
Five candidates - Balasani Lakshminarayana of the ruling TRS; Puvvada Nageshwar Rao, united candidate of Left parties and supported by TDP and Congress; and Lingala Kamal Raj of YSR Congress; and two independent candidates, Karnam Lakshminarayana and Gowdi Lakshminarayana - are in the fray for the local body MLC elections in the district.
The polling will be held in the four divisions of Khammam, Kothagudem, Palvancha and Bhadrachalam. 326 in Khammam, 226 in Kothagudem, 115 in Palvancha and 59 in Bhadrachalam, a total of 726 voters will exercise their right to vote in the MLC elections, which will held from 8 am to 4 pm on Saturday. Identity cards were also issued to all these voters to cast their votes at their respective polling stations.
For the first time, preferential voting system was introduced for local body MLC elections. The voters have to rank the candidates in their order of preference.
The vote would become invalid if the voter forgets to give his first preferential vote and goes ahead to second or third preference. The Ballot paper will have the names of the contesting candidates along with their party symbols.
One assistant would be provided to the illiterate voters for assistance at the time of voting. Taking advantage of this facility, some parties, to confirm whether their party’s people’s representative casts his/her vote for them or not, reportedly forced them to apply for an assistant, stating that they are illiterates.
As per the guidelines and rules of the Election Commission of India, any person, who contests for any kind of election, must have minimum qualification and also must have knowledge reading and writing.
But the Returning Officer of Khammam district had received about 110 applications from the people’s representatives requesting to provide an assistant in casting their vote.
According to the District Sakshar Bharat’s report, there are no illiterates in the district and about 95 percent of the population are educated.
Meanwhile, the district administration has completed all the arrangements for the smooth conduct of local body MLC elections in the district as per the guidelines of the Election Commission of India.
Superintendent of Police Shahnawaz Qasim had already issued orders to the local authorities concerned to arrange tight security at the polling stations along with implementing section-144 near the polling stations.
The counting of votes would be held at Ambedkar Bhavan in Khammam on December 30.
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