The Election Commission of India (ECI) has rejected 428 out of 1,488 nominations filed for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.
The nominations were rejected after the scrutiny of the papers submitted by the candidates which went on till late Saturday evening. As a result, a total of 1,060 nominations have been accepted.
Of the total 893 candidates who filed their papers, 268 had been rejected owing to multiple nominations filed by the candidates themselves as well as those filed by their supporters leaving 625 candidates in the fray after the scrutiny process was completed. Malkajgiri, the largest constituency in the State accounted for highest number of rejected nominations at 115 out of 177 with just 62 accepted.
The number of rejected candidates too was high at 77 out of 114 who filed their papers. Malkajgiri now has 37 candidates in the fray. Medak Lok Sabha constituency has the highest number of 53 candidates in the fray followed by Bhongir with 51. Peddapalli constituency reported 49 candidates in the fray after scrutiny followed by Warangal SC (48) and Secunderabad and Chevella (46) each.
Adilabad constituency has the lowest number of candidates in the fray at 13 and Nagarkurnool — another constituency reserved for scheduled castes — is little higher at 21.
The number of contesting candidates could come down further by Monday evening, the last date of withdrawal of nominations. Rejection and withdrawal of nominations notwithstanding, there are likely to be large number of candidates remaining in the fray indicating multi-cornered contests in the offing in several constituencies.
