Counting of votes for MLC polls to be conducted today

Nashik: The counting for the Nashik Division Teachers Constituency election will start on Monday at the Central Warehousing Corporation in Ambad.
A candidate can only be declared victorious when they secure a vote more than 50% of the valid votes, which requires many rounds of counting until the threshold is achieved.
The election, held on June 26, was conducted in 90 polling stations spread across five districts of Nashik division – Nashik, Ahmednagar, Dhule, Jalgaon and Nandurbar.
The total number votes were 64,846 turnout was recorded at 93.4%.
“A total of 30 counting tables have been arranged, with each district collector, also serving as the assistant returning officer (ARO) for the election process, overseeing the counting at the six tables.
The process will initiate at 8am with a thorough mixing of all the ballots, followed by manually preparing bundles of 25 ballots each,” said the senior administrative officer.
Subsequently, invalid ballots will be removed from each bundle and valid votes will be allocated to the respective candidate.
“With 21 candidates in the fray, each table features 21 trays labelled with the candidates’ names. These votes are then tallied in bundles of 25. The returning officer determines the quota, which should be a vote more than half of the total valid votes counted,” the officer elaborated.
If no candidate surpasses the quota, then the candidate with the lowest votes is eliminated and the ballots assigned to them are transferred to the candidate with the second preference.
The elimination round persists until a candidate attains the quota.
“Considering the extensive exercise and the presence of at least three major contenders in the election—sitting MLC Kishor Darade (SS) from Mahayuti, Sandeep Gulve (SS-UBT) from Mahavikas Aghadi, and Vivek Kolhe (BJP) from Ahmednagar contesting independently—the counting process could potentially extend to a third round of votes,” a political observer remarked.