With 185 candidates in fray for Nizamabad LS seat, EC shuns EVMs

Hyderabad, Mar 29: Electronic Voting Machines will not be used for the first time in the elections to be held at Telangana's Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat. The constituency polls on April 11.

The decision not to use the EVM was taken owing to the large number of candidates contesting from this seat. The constituency is currently represented by K Kavitha, daughter of Telangana Chief Minister, K Chandrashekhar Rao.

Telangana's Chief Electoral Officer, Rajat Kumar said that there are as many as 185 candidates contesting from this seat. The number remained the same at 4 pm on Thursday, which was the last date to withdraw nominations.

As many as 200 nominations were filed of which 11 were rejected during scrutiny. 4 candidates withdrew from the race and the number stood at 185.

The top candidates in the fray are Kavitha, Madhu Yashki Goud of the Congress and Dharmapuri Aravind of the BJP.

Interestingly 178 turmeric and red jowar cultivating farmers filed their nominations as independents. They said that they wanted to highlight the plight of the farmers. Initially the plan was to field 1,000 farmers from the constituency, but many of them pulled out.

The EC said that it had decided to go for the ballot paper form of voting as it would not be possible to use the EVMs duet to the large number of candidates.

Each EVM can record only 16 names and the control unit can record the voting of only four such EVMs linked together. This means that each control unit can register a maximum of 64 candidates. Nizamabad in all has 1.5 million voters.