Termites eat ballot papers in Bhupalpally

Bhupalpally: In a bizarre incident, the poll officials on Tuesday found ballot papers gobbled up by termites when they opened the ballot boxes at the counting of votes polled for the ZPTC and MPTC seats. The ballot papers belong to Ambatpally and Suraram villages under Mahadevpur mandal.

According to the District Election Officer and Collector Vasam Venkateswarlu, the ballot box (PS 44) of Ambatpally has 395 ballot papers. Of which 105 MPTC votes got damaged and the rest were okay. As many as 116 ZPTC ballot papers were also damaged. In Suraram (PS 39), the number votes polled is 342, and of which 15 MPTC and 14 ZPTC votes were damaged.

Election Observer Akunuri Murali, who took stock of the situation, sent a detailed report to the State Election Commission. The authorities held back result of MPTC and waiting for the higher ups' directions. After the counting of undamaged votes, the authorities declared ZPTC results of Mahadevpur and Palimela mandals. Both the seats were clinched by the Congress won.

Narrow win for TRS

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) nominee Kodi Anjaiah won the Mahamutharam MPTC seat in Jayashankar-Bhupalpally district by just one vote on Tuesday. He defeated Vankudoth Bhaskar of the Congress, after a high drama. The authorities had to count votes four times as the number of votes secured by the candidates did not tally with the number of ballot papers. Initially, authorities declared Bhaskar of the Congress as the winner, however, it was declared in favour of the TRS candidate after recounting. The number of votes secured by Anjaiah is 819 votes, while Bhaskar got 818 votes.