As expected, K. Kavitha of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has been elected to Legislative Council from the Nizamabad Local Authorities Constituency with a huge majority. Counting of votes of the polling held on October 9 was taken up on Monday morning.
According to the information reaching here, Ms. Kavitha, daughter of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, has secured a majority of 672 votes over her nearest rival from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of the 823 votes polled by electors comprising councillor of municipal councils, corporators of municipal corporations, MPTC members of Mandal Parishads and ZPTC members of Zilla Parishads.
Of the total votes polled, Ms. Kavitha secured 728 followed by 56 to the BJP candidate and 29 to the Congress candidate. Another 10 votes were declared invalid.
The counting of votes commenced after 8 am and the exercise was completed in two rounds. In the first round in which 600 votes were counted, Ms. Kavitha secured 531 votes followed by 39 to BJP and 22 to Congress candidates with 8 votes declared invalid. In the second round, 223 votes were counted with Ms. Kavitha secured 197 votes followed by 17 by BJP candidate and 7 by Congress candidates and another two votes were declared invalid.
The votes secured by Ms. Kavitha clearly indicated cross-voting in the BJP and Congress since Congress has over 140 strength and BJP about 100 in the local authorities. However, the party candidates did not secure the votes of their party electors. The two parties have been accusing the ruling TRS of resorting to large scale irregularities in the MLC election including horse-trading.
The election of Ms. Kavitha, who lost the last Lok Sabha election from Nizamabad constituency, facilitates her entry into a law-making body after a gap of nearly one-and-a-half years as she represented Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat during 2014-19.
