KARIMNAGAR: Over 8,000 votes out of around one lakh segregated till Monday night in the Medak-Nizamabad-Adilabad-Karimnagar graduate MLC polls were declared invalid.
The counting of votes will commence only after segregating around one lakh remaining votes. Out of a total 3.5 lakh voters, 2.5 lakh graduates exercised their franchise.
Thousands of graduate voters failed to vote properly. According to sources, some voters even used their own pens instead of using the marker provided by the election officials. Several persons, including IT Minister D Sridhar Babu, expressed astonishment over a large number of invalid votes polled.
Of the 2,50,106 polled votes, till Monday night, around one lakh votes were segregated. Out of this, around 92,000 are valid. The remaining 1.5 lakh votes are yet to be separated and bundled.
Initially, it was believed that the total number of invalid votes was around 40,000. But officials later clarified that the figure was around 8,000.
Earlier, tension prevailed at counting centres for some time over invalid votes. MLC graduate constituency candidates staged a protest near the counting centre at Ambedkar stadium.