Nalgonda: Counting of votes to commence from 8 am

Nalgonda: District In-charge Collector V Chandra Shekar directed the officials concerned to carryout counting of votes transparently at all counting centres at respective seven municipalities in the district.

On Friday, he held a meeting with municipal special officers, commissioners, municipal elections returning and assistant Returning officers at the district collectorate. Addressing the officials, he stated that counting staff have to reach the centres by 6 am as the counting of votes would commence from 8 am.

He said counting of three wards would be carried out by each returning officer and added that counting of wards would be carried out one by one.

As per the counting process, counting of votes in ballot boxes of wards would be carried out after counting of postal ballots, he informed. Validity of ballot boxes and postal ballots would be decided as per the norms of Election Commission. He asserted that Returning Officer is final authority with regard to counting and announcement of results and added that he directed the returning officers to keep valid, invalid, NOTA, postal ballots and statutory covers given by officials on poling day of each ward in a cover and seal it and place all sealed covers of all the wards of a municipality in a box and should be kept in district treasury office by respective municipal commissioner.

On the occasion, master trainer Tarala Paramesh gave a power point presentation on counting process to the officials. In this meeting, District Revenue Officer Ravindranath, District Rural Development Official Shekar Reddy, Revenue Divisional Officers Jagadishwar Reddy, Rohit Singh and Lingya Naik, municipal special officers Raj Kumar, R Srinivas Murthy, Narayana Swamy, Guda Venkateshwarlu and others participated.