CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOGGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI ■ ■ HYDERABAD SATURDAY APRIL 27, 2024 `9.00 PAGES 18 LATE CITY EDITION POLLING COMPLETE IN 14 STATES/UNION TERRITORIES RAHUL’S ELECTORAL FATE SEALED IN WAYANAD Over 65% voter turnout in 2nd phase of LS elections P R E E T H A N A I R @ New Delhi IN a relatively improved showing, the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections recorded over 65% voter turnout covering 88 seats across 13 states. According to election officials, the highest voting percentage was recorded in Tripura at 78.53% while the lowest polling was in Uttar Pradesh at 54.85%. In the second phase, Kerala, Karnataka and Rajasthan accounted for more than half seats. While elections to 14 seats were held in Karnataka, 13 seats in the desert state of Rajasthan, 8 seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, 6 seats in Madhya Pradesh, 5 seats each in Assam and Bihar, 3 seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and 1 seat each in Manipur, T ripura and Jammu and Kashmir. All eyes are on the high stakes battle in Kerala, where the BJP has been aggressively working to open its account. The contests in Wayanad, where former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is contesting, and Thiruvananthapuram where Union minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar is pitted against sitting MP Shashi Tharoor, are keenly watched. Other top guns in the fray includ- BRS MLA and former finance minister T Harish Rao handed over his resignation letter to journalists near Martyrs Memorial at Gun Park on Friday and vowed not to contest in the ensuing bypoll if the Congress government implements the six guarantees, including crop loan waiver up to `2 lakh, by August 15. Harish also announced that he was ready to give his resignation letter in the Speaker’s format. He then dared Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy to send his resignation letter through his staff to Gun Park. Earlier this week, the BRS MLA had asked the chief minister to EVMs get vote of confidence from SC Petitions seeking 100% cross-verification of votes rejected; bench issues two directives @ New Delhi THE Supreme Court on Friday rejected all petitions seeking 100% cross-verification of votes cast on electronic voting machines (EVMs) with a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), saying suspicions of tampering were unfounded. It also turned down pleas to revive paper ballots. A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Dutta delivered two separate but concurring verdicts. “While maintaining a balanced perspective is crucial in evaluating systems or institutions, blindly distrusting any aspect of the system can breed VOTING Tripura 79.46% Manipur 77.32% Chhattisgarh 73.05% West Bengal 71.84% J&K 71.21% Assam 71.11% Kerala 70.35% Karnataka 68.30% Rajasthan 62.46% ed actor-turned-politician Arun Govil in Meerut, Karnataka deputy CM D K Shivakumar’s brother D K Suresh in Bangalore Rural, and former Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy (JDS) in Mandya. Meanwhile BJP’s Hema Malini, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat are seeking a hat-trick Maharasthra Madhya Pradesh Bihar Uttar Pradesh 58.57% 55.77% 55.08% 54.83% come there and proposed that both of them should submit ‘conditional’ resignation letters. If the government implemented its guarantees, Harish said he would resign as an MLA. However, if the government failed to implement the guarantees by August 15, then he wanted Revanth to step down as chief minister. Harish, who was accompanied by scores of party leaders, said: “If the Cong ress implemented its six guarantees, then I will resign as an MLA and not contest in the bypoll. The interests of poor people are more important to me than politics.” CONTINUED ON P5 unwarranted scepticism,” the court said, adding democracy is all about striving to build harmony and trust between all institutions. Justice Khanna in his verdict issued two directions. One, sealing and storing the Symbol Loading Unit after completing the symbol loading process for at least 45 days. And two, checking the burnt memory in the microcontrollers of 5% of EVMs for tampering per assembly constituency by a team of engi- P R I YA R AT H N A M (Source: ECI) of wins from UP’s Mathura, Rajasthan’s Kota and Jodhpur, respectively . The second phase is crucial for the BJP-led NDA as it is seeking a third time under Narendra Modi’s leadership. The party’s performance in Rajasthan, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Bihar will greatly influence its plan to increase its tally from the 303 seats in 2019 Lok Sabha elections. “We must reject as foible and unsound the submission to return to the ballot paper system. The weakness of the ballot paper system is well known and documented,” the bench said @ Hyderabad Smoke billows from Allen Homeo factory in Rangareddy on Friday; (below) 15-year-old Sai Charan, who rescued five employees A major fire broke out on Friday evening at Allen Homeo and Herbal Products factory located in Nandigama village in Rangareddy district, around 40 km from the city. Around 50 employees were working in the factory at the time of the accident. While one suffered head injuries, the rest managed to escape unhurt. The fire originated in a temporary shed of the factory, located near the three-sto- Be ready with resignation letter in prescribed format: Revanth E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Hyderabad Accepting the challenge thrown by former minister T Harish Rao, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy reiterated that he would waive crop loans up to `2 lakh by August 15. Addressing Congress social media coordinators h e re o n F r i d ay, Revanth said that the government has already implemented five of the six guarantees within 100 days. “I am accepting the challenge of Harish Rao. I will waive crop loans by August 15. Be ready with your resignation letter in the Speaker’s format,” Revanth told Harish. Revanth criticised Harish for submitting a lengthy resignation letter, which he likened to a Seesa Padyam. “Your Seesa Padyam will not be accepted by the Speaker. Please provide your resignation in the prescribed format. After August 15, take rest under ‘chinta cheetu’ (tamarind tree) in Chintamadaka village,” he told Harish. “ After August 15, ‘Siddipetaku nee sani viragada avutundui’ (Siddipet will be ridden of your curse soon),” the chief minister added. Revanth found fault with Harish for going to the Martyrs Memorial and alleged that he never visited it in the last 10 years. Whenever Harish wanted to hoodwink people, he would go to the memorial, the CM CONTINUED ON P5 claimed. Palpable support for Modi in ‘mini-India’ Malkajgiri SW ET H AV I M A L A M & M A N DA R A V I N D E R R E D D Y @ Hyderabad A 45-year-old businessman from Kukatpally, who identified himself as a member of the Congress and said he had voted for the Revanth Reddy-led party in the state elections, did not hesitate for a moment when asked who he would support in the upcoming L o k S ab h a elections. “It’s Modi at the Centre. The Lok Sabha election is to select the government at the Centre. I believe in Modi and would vote for the BJP,” said Mahesh, momentarily pausing his conversation with a flower vendor. Mahesh is not alone in voicing this opinion. Several voters from Malkajgiri constituency said that they would vote for Narendra Modi and the BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Dhanalakota Shravan Kumar, a traditional artiste from Quthbullapur — one of the seven suburban Assembly segments making up the Malkajgiri LS seat along with Kukatpally, Secunderabad Cantonment, LB Nagar, Malkajgiri, Medchal and Uppal — reasoned, “If I vote for the Congress, I feel my vote would be wasted as the party might not come to power at the Centre. As for the BRS, they have lost power in Telangana.” Most of Shravan’s neighbours expressed a similar view. Though all seven seg- ments voted for the BRS in the November 2023 Assembly elections, it appears that the saffron party has an edge in the LS polls. Senior leader Eatala Rajender, fielded by the BJP from Malkajgiri, asserted that people are with PM Narendra Modi — whose roadshow in this segment in March saw a massive response. Rajender, a former min- ister in the TRS (now BRS) government who joined the BJP in 2021 after an acrimonious fallout with the then CM K Chandrasekhar Rao, told TNIE recently during Hyderabad Dialogues that with effective election management, the party can win 12 out of the 17 seats in the state including Malkajgiri. The constituency established , in 2009 following delimitation, has 37.47 lakh voters, with over 90% belonging to urban and suburban areas. With a sizable population of middle-class migrant settlers from other states including Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu due to the presence of Central government institutions, Malkajgiri is deemed ‘Mini India’. CONTINUED ON P5 ILLUSTRATION: MANDAR PARDIKAR neers after the results are out. An EVM comprises three units — ballot unit, control unit and the VVPAT. All three are embedded with microcontrollers, which have a burnt memory from the manufacturer. The request to verify the microcontrollers can be made by candidates who stand second or third in the elections. A written request has to be made within seven days after the results are announced. Those who make the request would foot the veri- fication bill. But if an EVM is found tampered, the money would be refunded. Besides, the bench suggested that the ECI examine the possibility of machine counting of the VVPAT paper slips and see if it could add a bar code for each party along with the party symbol in the slips. Justice Dipankar Datta said there seems to be a concerted effort to discredit, diminish and weaken India’s progress on every possible frontier and any such attempt has to be “nipped in the bud.”He added that EVMs have stood the test of time and the increased voting percentage was a sufficient reason to hold that the voters have reposed faith in the current system. Major fire at herbal factory, 15-yr-old helps five trapped employees escape BRISK POLLING IN TRIPURA, LOW TURNOUT IN U.P. STATE Return to ballot paper unsound S U C H I T R A K A LYA N M O H A N T Y Young voters after casting their votes at Purameri, Kozhikode | E GOKUL Harish vows to quit and not contest in bypolls if Cong implements 6Gs E X P R E S S N E W S S E R V I C E @ Hyderabad CBSE starts work to hold Board exams twice a year from 2025 | P9 reyed main building. As the flames rapidly spread to the main building, some employees jumped out of windows from the third floor to save their lives. Before fire tenders reached the spot, a teenager saved the lives of around five employees by helping them come out of the burning building. Sai Charan (15), who was from the same village, had come there to pick up his friend’s mother. Amidst the chaos, the teenager reacted swiftly. After noticing trapped employees attempting to flee through windows, Sai Charan facilitated their safe descent with the help of a ladder and rope available there. According to sources, the fire erupted during welding works, igniting the thermocol material stored in the shed. Later, the fire spread to AC units in the building, resulting in several explosions. CONTINUED ON P2
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