Telangana sees smooth polling as more than 70% ink fingers

HYDERABAD: The elections for 120 municipalities and nine municipal corporations across the state on Wednesday saw a huge turnout. However, in districts bordering Hyderabad such as Medchal-Malkajgiri and Rangareddy turnouts were relatively low. The state election commission (SEC) said that Nalgonda district saw the highest turnout.
The SEC is likely to order re-polling for one booth in Ward 41 of Kamareddy municipality where a tender vote was polled.The commission has asked the Kamareddy collector to submit a report on the incident.
The SEC announced that the average voter turnout across the state was little over 70% with Choutuppal recording the highest turnout (93.31%) and Nizampet the lowest (39.65%).
In the IT belt, turnout remained relatively low as companies did not declare a holiday for voting. In some cases, officials said, some IT employees came in to vote during the first two hours of polling.
Polling went on smoothly across the states except a few stray incidents of cases between workers of different parties. Incidents of violence were reported from erstwhile Mahabubnagar, Khammam, Nizamabad, Rangareddy and Karimnagar districts. Most scuffles were over allegations by various political parties on the use of money and other items to influence voters. On the day of polling, five cases of assault pertaining to polls had been recorded across state.
In Nalgonda and Wyra police arrested workers from political parties who were allegedly distributing liquor and cash to voters on Tuesday night. Nizamabad police registered a case against TRS 41 ward candidate Changubai for allegedly distributing cash and liquor. In some cases, police had to resort to light lathicharge to disperse crowds.
Though there were no major complaints of missing names in the electoral lists, in Nizamabad municipal corporation, people in Wards 35 and 36 claimed around 150 names were missing in the voter list.