Journalism of Courage
A voter turnout of 93.13 per cent was recorded in the bypoll to Telangana’s Munugode Assembly seat held on Thursday, surpassing the turnout of 91.3 per cent seen in the 2018 general elections. Even after polling closed at 6 pm Thursday, long queues were seen outside booths.
According to the Returning Officer’s final report Friday morning, of the total 2,41,855 electors in Munugode, as many as 2,25,192 exercised their franchise. There are 1,21,662 male and 1,20,126 female voters in the constituency.
The Munugode bypoll was necessitated by sitting MLA Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy’s resignation from the Congress in August. Reddy contested the bypoll on a BJP ticket against former TRS MLA Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy. The Congress has fielded its late leader Palvai Govardhan Reddy’s daughter Palvai Sravanthi. Including these three candidates from major political parties, a total of 47 candidates are in the fray.
The office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO, Telangana) stated that the last electronic voting machine (EVM) came in at 1.30 am, the strong room was sealed at 4.40 am, and a final voter turnout of 93.13 per cent was recorded. This is also the highest voter turnout seen during recent bypolls held in the state followed by the byelections in Nagarjunasagar (88%) and Huzurabad (86.3%), both held last year, and the Dubbaka bypoll (82.61%) in 2020. The result in Munugode will be declared on November 6, Sunday.
Polling began slowly on Thursday with only 11.2 per cent of votes being polled by 9 am. By 11 am, it rose to 25.8 per cent and then to 41.3 per cent by 1 pm. Two hours later it touched 59.92 per cent and at 5 pm the voter turnout rose to 77.55 per cent. As many as 105 of the total 298 polling stations were identified as critical.
Barring a few minor incidents, the polling continued peacefully. Speaking to indianexpress.com, CEO Vikas Raj said Rs 7.1 lakh cash and about 60 litres of liquor were seized on the poll day, apart from the receipt of 98 complaints about outsiders’ presence in the constituency. “But we had no problem at all inside polling stations anywhere. Glitches were there. We had to change EVMs at a couple of places and there was a bit of a problem with VVPATs (Voter verifiable paper audit trail) at four places. We changed them too. We were having these in reserve and were able to change all of them immediately. Polling was hardly stopped for 15-30 minutes anywhere,” he said.
According to the CEO, polling went on till late evening. Even at 8.30 pm, there were people waiting at 20 to 25 polling stations. “The last one was completed at about 10 pm. The last EVM to come back to my reception centre was at 1.30 am,” he said. The EVMs were transferred to a strongroom guarded by central forces as well as the state police. “There are video cameras outside. There are representatives of candidates right outside the strong rooms. There is no question of anyone coming close to the EVMs now,” he added.
Bypolls to seven Assembly constituencies spread across six states in the country were held on Thursday.
Regarding the counting of votes on Sunday, the CEO said that the counting hall and strongroom are adjacent to each other. “The EVM boxes from the strongrooms will go straight to the counting tables and counting will be in an extremely controlled atmosphere. There will be counting agents of the candidates at the table and the candidate and his election agent at the RO’s (returning officer) table also. It is all transparent. Halls are located just side-by-side. Adequate security will be there,” he explained.
As part of the arrangements, the election authorities have arranged for 21 counting tables in addition to the RO’s table and a table for counting VVPATs. As there are 47 candidates in the fray, each candidate can have an agent at each table. There will also be micro-observers and the entire process will be video graphed. “From each candidate’s side, there will be 22 people in the counting hall. We have told our RO and other counting officials to be on vigil because there are going to be so many polling agents. If they create any trouble, we will have them out. They have to behave themselves and not in an unruly manner,” the CEO said.
Stating that there is no scope of anything going wrong in the counting process, the CEO said the process of counting will begin at 8 am and is expected to be over in eight hours. The result should be out by 4 or 5 pm, he said.
During the highly intense campaign phase in Munugode that lasted nearly three months, Election Commission officials, along with the police and excise departments, seized cash, liquor and gold worth about Rs 8.27 crore in total from the region. A total of 56 FIRs have been registered by the police, apart from 191 cases by the excise department.
