Tight race for Graduate MLC seat as vote counting continues in Karimnagar

Karimnagar:After the fifth round of counting, Anji Reddy was leading the race for the Legislative Council graduates constituency with 38,967 votes, followed by the Congress’ Narender Reddy with 31,644 and BSP candidate Prasanna Harikrishna (backed by the BRS) with 26,562 votes.

The vote count for the seat from the Karimnagar, Medak, Nizamabad, and Adilabad districts is underway in Karimnagar. By 10.30 pm on Tuesday, approximately 2.24 lakh votes had been validated, while around 28,000 votes had been declared invalid.

The winner will be determined based on a complex counting procedure. In the MLC election, a candidate must secure more than 50 per cent of the votes to win. If no candidate crosses this threshold after the first preference votes are counted, second preference votes will be considered. The process continues until one candidate accumulates more than 50 per cent of the total valid votes.

If no candidate reaches the 50 per cent mark, the elimination process kicks in. The candidate with the lowest number of votes will be eliminated, and their votes will be redistributed to the remaining candidates based on second preference.

Interestingly, even candidates who receive a significant number of second preference votes could emerge victorious, as the system allows for shifts in votes after eliminations.

Despite the complicated nature of the counting process, the BJP’s Anji Reddy remained confident of winning the election, but the final result will determine whether he can cross the critical threshold.