Khammam: The Khammam MLC Local Bodies elections held on Sunday had MPTCs, ZPTCs and councillors of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) thronging the four polling centres an hour prior to the scheduled time of 8 am to cast their vote. They had arrived in hired private buses and cast their vote by 10 am.
The election which went off peacefully saw 98.07 of the voters cast their votes — 692 out of 726 voters. There were five candidates in the fray, including Balasani Laxminarayana of TRS, Kamalraj of YSRC and Puvvada Nageswara Rao of CPI.
All 59 voters under the Bhadrachalam polling station cast their votes by 2 pm while 199 out of the 226 in Kothagudem division did so. About 321 votes have been polled of 326 voters in Khammam division and 113 voters against 115 in Paloncha division.
CPI candidate Puvvada Nageswara Rao and TRS candidate Balasani came to the Khammam polling station and supervised the voting pattern. The YSRC voters were the last to cast their votes; Left party voters came to the polling station after the TRS MPTCs had cast their vote.
TD MPTCs came as group and cast their vote. Though there was a diktat from the party to keep away from the voting two MPTCs of CPI-(ML) New Democracy participated – only to be suspended for violating the party’s collective decision on the Local Bodies election.
Puvvada Nageswara Rao said that they would win the election with a majority of between 1 and 18 votes. “The response to my candidature is overwhelming and the CPM, TD and Congress extended their support with commitment,” he said.
Balasani Laxmina-rayana’s camp was similarly confident of winning. K. Satish, TRS leader, said, “Last minute changes helped us. We will win with a 70-vote majority.”
