Hyderabad: Counting of votes in the municipal elections held in Telangana two days ago would be taken up on Saturday and the ruling TRS, which swept the rural local body polls last year, is hopeful of continuing its impressive performance.
Polling for 120 municipalities and nine corporations in the state, except Karimnagar Municipal Corporation, was held amid tight security on 22 January and 74.40 percent of voters exercised their franchise in the municipalities.
The percentage of polling in municipal corporations was 58.83, official sources said on Friday.
Election to the Karimnagar Municipal Corporation was held peacefully on Friday with an estimated 62 percent of voters exercising their franchise, official sources said.
However, the final figure was yet to be arrived at.
Karimnagar Police Commissioner VB Kamalasan Reddy said no untoward incident had been reported.
The election to the Karimnagar Municipal Corporation was not held on 22 January due to court cases regarding the poll.
The TRS bagged all 32 Zilla Parishads in the rural local body elections held last year and the party is hopeful of continuing its impressive performance in the municipal polls, according to TRS sources.
TRS has been successful at the hustings, having returned to power with a massive majority in the Assembly polls held in December 2018.
It put up a decent performance in the Lok Sabha polls (winning 11 out of the total 19 seats), though it suffered an unexpected setback in the form of TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's daughter K Kavitha failing to retain her Nizamabad seat.
BJP made surprise gains in the Lok Sabha polls, securing four seats.
TRS had won the Huzurnagar Assembly constituency bypoll held in October last year where bye-election was necessitated after state Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy quit following his election to the Lok Sabha.
Meanwhile, Congress Legislature Party leader M Bhatti Vikramarka alleged in a statement on Friday that the urban local body polls cannot be said to have been held between TRS and Congress and that it was a contest between the distribution of "liquor, money, inducements (by TRS) and the democratic Congress".
Congress activists, however, faced the "excesses" of TRS boldly, he claimed.
Congress leader G Niranjan submitted a representation to State Election Commissioner G Nagi Reddy, alleging that state minister G Kamalakar violated the model code by telling reporters after voting at Karimnagar that he was happy to have voted for TRS for the first time as minister.
Niranjan, in his letter, alleged that the minister had also said 70 percent of voters voted in favour of TRS.
Asked about the issue, Nagi Reddy said a vote becomes invalid if anyone does a breach of secrecy of voting.
"... we don't know. It's a hypothetical thing. We will examine and then see what is to be done, he said.
January 24, 2020 at 11:53PM
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