Deferment of vote counting may delay reopening of govt schools

Hyderabad: With the postponement of the counting of Parishad elections votes, the opening of government schools and colleges may be delayed.

The counting of votes which had to be held on May 27 as per the schedule announced by the State Election Commission, has been postponed indefinitely and the new date would be announced soon.

The counting may be taken up in the last week of June or July 1 or 2. The decision to postpone the counting was taken due to the objections raised by the political parties.

Several political parties have objected to the huge gap between the completion of polling process and the counting of votes.

The three phased polling was concluded on May 14 and as per the earlier schedule the counting of votes would be held on May 27.

The election of chairpersons of Zilla Parishads and Mandal Parishads is scheduled in July first week.

As there was a gap between counting dates and chairperson elections dates, the opposition parties opposed the counting of votes on May 27.

Due to the decision of the SEC, as many as 37 days gap would be there on counting of votes and elections of the Mandal and Zilla Parishad chairpersons.

As per the rules, the elected Mandal Parishad and Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency members would elect the chairpersons of Mandal and Zilla Parishads.

As per the earlier schedule election of MPTCs and ZPTCs would be announced on May 27 and they have to wait till July 3 to elect the chairpersons.

This means that the political parties would have an opportunity to bargain with the MPTCs and ZPTCs being elected from their rival parties.

The ruling party would have the advantage as the opposition MPTCs and ZPTCs may be encouraged to defect.

With this the opposition parties have opposed the gap between announcement of elections of MPTCs and ZPTCs and election of chairpersons of MPPs and ZPs.

In order to enable the SEC to take up counting just before the election of chairpersons of ZPs and MPPs, the State government has to amend the Telangana Panchayat Raj Act. The process is going on.

As per the indications coming from the government, the counting of votes of ZPTC and MPTC elections would be held in last week of June or on July 1 or 2.

The term of the present MPTCs and ZPTCs would end on July 3. Therefore new chairpersons should be in place before that.

However, the SEC has selected government schools and colleges for counting the votes of the ZPTC and MPTC elections.

The ballot boxes have been kept in 5,659 centers across the States and most of the centers are government colleges and schools.

They have been kept in about 150 schools and colleges of each district.

In each school and college about 7 rooms have been taken up for storing the ballot boxes and police security has been provided to them.

As per the rules no one should enter into the centres designated as strong rooms of ballot boxes.

The schools would begin from June 12 as per the latest decision of the government.

Though they have to be opened from June 1, the vacation has been extended up to June 12 due to heat wave conditions.

It means that the classes would not be held for 20 days in the government schools which have been chosen for keeping the ballot boxes.

The officials may have to make separate arrangements for holding the classes to the students.