Counting of votes in Andhra Pradesh's rural local body elections began at eight in the morning on Saturday, setting in motion the final stage of a contest that will decide who controls the village and district-level councils across the state. The exercise, spread over 365 centres, is expected to run through the day, with the State Election Commission asking district collectors to ensure that the entire process is completed by eight in the evening.
Postal ballots were taken up first, in line with the usual practice, and the counting of ballot papers from the polling stations followed. The fate of 21,012 candidates who contested the elections to the Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies, known as MPTCs, and the Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies, or ZPTCs, will be settled by the count.
Polling for the parishad elections was held on Thursday, November 5, across Andhra Pradesh. Elections were held for 582 ZPTC seats and 7,767 MPTC seats. Another 77 ZPTC seats and 2,051 MPTC seats had already been decided without a contest, with candidates in those seats winning unanimously. The overall voter turnout in Thursday's polling stood at 70.72 per cent, according to figures released by the State Election Commission.
The scale of the counting operation is considerable. As many as 39,694 personnel are involved in the process, including 11,002 counting supervisors and 28,692 counting assistants. The counting is being carried out at 9,062 tables set up across the 365 centres.
The Election Commission has arranged for heavy police security at the centres, and surveillance is being maintained both inside and outside the counting halls through closed-circuit television cameras. The Commission has said the footage will be preserved for 60 days after the counting is over.
State Election Commissioner Anil Chandra Punetha said elaborate arrangements had been made to ensure that the counting proceeds smoothly, transparently and peacefully. He had earlier said that the Commission had completed all preparations for the second general elections to the MPTCs and ZPTCs, and that the counting process would be conducted under strong police security.
The elections matter because the parishad bodies are the backbone of rural governance in Andhra Pradesh. The MPTCs form the mandal parishads, which oversee development work at the level of a cluster of villages, while the ZPTCs make up the zilla parishads, the district-level bodies that handle larger rural development programmes, including roads, drinking water, health and education facilities in the countryside.
Control of these bodies gives a political party a deep organisational presence in rural areas, and the results are therefore watched closely as a measure of a party's standing in the villages.
In all, there are 9,821 MPTC seats and 659 ZPTC seats in the state. The elections were conducted using ballot papers rather than electronic voting machines, in keeping with the practice for local body polls in the state. Pink ballot papers were used for the MPTC elections and white ones for the ZPTC elections. Polling on November 5 was held from seven in the morning to five in the evening at 31,460 polling stations, with about 2.62 crore voters eligible to take part.
Re-polling was conducted on Friday, November 6, in some areas of Anantapur, Kurnool, Srikakulam, Markapuram and Palnadu districts, after which the stage was set for Saturday's counting. Officials said the re-polling had concluded peacefully.
Early trends emerging from the counting centres during the day put the ruling TDP-led alliance ahead in a large number of seats, according to live reports from the counting. The alliance, which includes the Telugu Desam Party, the Jana Sena Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, appeared to be leading in the initial rounds, while the YSR Congress Party, the principal opposition party in the state, was trailing.
The early picture, however, was only partial, and officials cautioned that the final outcome would become clear only as the counting of all the ballot papers progressed through the afternoon and evening.
The parishad elections are being seen as the first major test of the political mood in rural Andhra Pradesh since the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections of 2024, in which the TDP-led alliance swept to power in the state. The YSR Congress Party, which had won the parishad elections convincingly when they were last held, is fighting to retain its influence in the rural councils, while the alliance is seeking to extend the mandate it received in 2024 down to the grassroots level.
For the candidates and their supporters, Saturday is the day of reckoning after weeks of campaigning in the villages. The counting centres saw anxious crowds gathering outside, even as police kept a close watch to prevent any trouble. The administration had made it clear that the counting would be carried out under strict supervision, with agents of the candidates present at the tables to watch the process.
The Election Commission's instruction to complete the counting by eight in the evening reflects the sheer volume of ballot papers to be counted by hand. Because the MPTC and ZPTC votes have to be separated and counted manually, the process takes considerably longer than the counting of votes cast on electronic voting machines.
Officials had earlier indicated that the first trends would begin to emerge around noon, with most of the MPTC results expected by the afternoon and the ZPTC results by the evening.
As the counting continues, the focus will shift from the overall trend to the constituency-wise results, which will show how the different regions of the state have voted. The coastal districts, the Rayalaseema region and the north coastal belt have traditionally voted differently, and the parishad results will offer a detailed map of the political preferences of rural voters in each of these regions.
The results will also determine the composition of the zilla parishads, whose chairpersons will be elected in the days after the counting. The chairpersons of the zilla parishads wield considerable influence over the implementation of rural development schemes in their districts, and the election to those posts will be the next stage of the political contest once Saturday's results are known.
For now, the counting continues at the 365 centres, with officials working to complete the task within the deadline set by the Commission. The final picture of who will run Andhra Pradesh's rural councils for the coming term is expected to be clear by late Saturday evening.
(Reporting based on The Hindu and The Hans India.)