Polling underway peacefully in Telangana, says Chief Electoral Officer

Hyderabad (Telangana): Telangana Chief Electoral Officer Vikas Raj said on Thursday that polling for the 119-member assembly, which began at 7 a.m. in the state, is underway in a peaceful way.

He also said that long lines of voters were seen outside polling booths in interior as well as urban areas to exercise their franchise, which will continue till 6 p.m.

Speaking to ANI after casting his vote along with his family at a polling booth in SR Nagar in Hyderabad, he said, "Since 7 am, we have started seeing long queues at very interior places also...Polling is going on briskly. At every place, it (polling) is very peaceful."

The poll official requested everybody to "come and join" (to cast their vote).

Meanwhile, voting was reported to have stopped for some time at a polling booth in the Kamareddy Assembly constituency in Telangana due to an EVM "malfunction."

A total of 3.17 crore candidates are polling to decide the fate of as many as 2290 candidates.

Voters would exercise their franchise at 35,655 polling stations set up across the state. For the first time in Telangana, home voting for citizens aged over 80 years and persons with disabilities has also been made available, with about 27,600 voters enlisted to avail of the service on Thursday.

About 1,000 other voters have also registered for the Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System, according to a poll official.

In the 2014 assembly polls in united Andhra Pradesh, the then-incumbent Congress got 25.20 per cent votes and BRS (then TRS) got 34 per cent in the Telangana area.

In 2018, BRS (then Telangana Rashtra Samithi) won 88 of the 119 seats and had 47.4 per cent of the vote share. The Congress came a distant second with just 19 seats.

(ANI)