Almost 60% of the nominations filed for the Jubilee Hills Assembly Constituency elections were rejected after a long scrutiny session that started on Wednesday and lasted till the wee hours of Thursday. Rejection invalidated the candidacy of more than 61% of applicants, drastically reducing the number of competitors.
Of the total number of 321 nominations submitted before the deadline, 186 were rejected, leaving only 135 valid nominations. Thus, 81 candidates from the total number of 211 who submitted their nominations found themselves in the fray. The remaining 130 candidates were rejected due to errors in the nominations.
Election officials have informed that nominations can be rejected for a mistake as simple as leaving out a blank column instead of saying “Not Applicable” or including a simple hyphen. Rejection may also be due to insufficient number of petitioners or petitioners supporting more than one candidate.
“A large number of candidates filed their nominations on the last day and at the last moment, which is also one of the reasons why the documents might have been incomplete,” the official said.
Out of 321 nominations of 211 candidates, 194 nominations of 117 candidates were submitted on the last day. Most of them were pushed by pressure groups involving displaced people from the Regional Circuit project, protesters against the Pharma City project, unemployed youth and retired workers who were not receiving pension benefits. The nominations of the main contenders, V. Naveen Yadav of the Congress, Maganti Sunitha of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi and Lankala Deepak Reddy of the Bharatiya Janata Party were accepted. Of the total, 30 were filed by recognized political parties, while the rest were filed by independents.
Friday 24 October is the deadline for withdrawing nominations, after which the number of candidates could further decrease. There were no withdrawals on Thursday.
If there is no selection even on Friday, the number of control units will be two instead of one in each polling station. Each controller can support a maximum of four Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and each EVM can display the names of 16 candidates. Added with NOTA, if the number of options exceeds 64, a second controller will be required with one or two more EVMs attached depending on the number.
Published – 23 Oct 2025 20:32 IST
