New Delhi:
The fate of the ruling TRS, along with a beleaguered Congress and the BJP, would be decided today as counting of votes is being taken up in 17 Lok Sabha constituencies of Telangana.
Exit polls have predicted that the TRS would win majority of seats.
It is also a major test for the Congress, which had seen 11 of its total 19 MLAs shifting loyalty to the TRS since the beginning of March.
And no less for the BJP, which won a mere one seat in the December Assembly polls, in which it forfeited deposit in more than 100 of the 119 segments. TRS had returned to power with 88 seats.
Here are the LIVE updates on the counting of votes for Lok Sabha elections in Telangana:
Owaisi was leading by 2.72 lakh votes over his BJP rival Bhagavanth Rao.
BJP candidate B Sanjay was leading by 74,198 votes against his nearest rival and sitting TRS MP B Vinod Kumar in Karimnagar after the second round.
Telangana: CM K Chandrashekhar Rao's daughter K Kavitha trailing from Nizamabad, BJP candidate Dharmapuri Arvind leading by over 31,000 votes (file pic) pic.twitter.com/ZRH1mvLkWm
— ANI (@ANI) May 23, 2019
BJP is leading on four seats in Telangana, early trends suggest.
Chhattisgarh: Total Lok Sabha seats: 11, Trends available: 11, BJP 09,
Congress 02
TRS's Nizamabad candidate Kavita trailing by 4,784 votes.
Telangana Lok Sabha Election Results (16/17 seats): TRS leading on 11 seats.
Telangana Lok Sabha Election Results (15/17 seats): TRS - 12, BJP - 1, Congress - 1, Others - 1
AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi was leading in Hyderabad. TRS nominee BB Patil was leading in Zaheerabad by 680 votes over his Congress nominee Madan Mohan, official sources said.
Telangana Lok Sabha Election Results (9/17 seats): TRS - 6, BJP - 1, Congress - 1, Others - 1
The TRS is leading on two seats, as per early trends.
The early trends show the NDA leading on 18 seats while the Congress is leading on five seats. These are the counts based on postal ballot counting.
First trends are expected anytime soon. Over 16 lakh postal ballots which the Election Commission has called a "sheer count" are being counted first.
The exit polls have also predicted that the TRS may win 15-17 seats in Telangana while both the BJP and the Congress will not be able to open their accounts in the state.
The Election Commission is sticking to its plan of counting the paper trail machines slips at the end of counts and not in the beginning as demanded by opposition parties. The Commission is also learnt to have decided to count postal ballots simultaneously with Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) count due to the "sheer size" of the ballots received this time from service voters.
The Election Commission is learnt to have stuck to its plan of counting the paper trail machines slips at the end of counts and not in the beginning as demanded by opposition parties.
The Commission is also learnt to have decided to count postal ballots simultaneously with Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) count due to the "sheer size" of the ballots received this time from service voters.
At 8.20 AM, EVMs will be brought to the counting tables for counting. Each hall will have 14 tables.
The polls, which saw 443 candidates in the fray, were held in a single phase in 34,603 polling stations and 18,526 polling locations.
The counting of votes is scheduled to begin at 8 am. As per the rules, the ballot votesd will be counted first, followed by the EVM votes.
