Aurangabad: NCP candidate and sitting MLC Vikram Kale is leading in the Marathwada Teachers Constitutency election by the margin of 6,655 votes after the end of the ninth round of the counting.
The counting of votes began at Marathwada Realtors Pvt Ltd, at 8 am, on Thursday.
Divisional commissioner Sunil Kendrekar, election observer Shekhar Channe, collectors of all the eight districts of the region, district election officers, candidates and their representatives were present. The counting is being held at 53 tables. There were 61,529 voters while 53,257 of them exercised their franchise.
After the secuitny, 2485 votes were declared invalid. This means, there are 50,771 valid votes and the quota for the winning in the first preference votes were fixed at 25,386 votes. However, no candidate achieved the quota votes in the first round.
Vikram Kale received 20,078 votes in the first round followed by BJP candidate Kiran Patil (13,489 votes), and Suryakant Vishwasrao of Marathwada Shikshang Sangh (13,543 votes). The remaining 11 candidates obtained 3,561 votes of first preference.
The election was held on January 30. A total of 53,256 voters (over 86 per cent) turned up for the election in the eight districts. The counting for the second preference votes began as no one got the quota of votes.
The elimination of votes from the candidates who had the lowest votes began. The second preference votes were transferred to the remaining candidates was done in the elimination.
At the end of the 9th round, Kale had secured 20,331 votes, Kiran Patil who was in second place in the earlier rounds was in third place in this round with 13,616 votes. Suryakant Vishwarao has gone on the second place with (13,676 votes).