Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s worst fears regarding election symbols seem to have come true in Parakala.
On May 23rd, 2012 TRS Ex-MP Boinapally Vinod Kumar had filed a complaint with the Election Commission asking it not to allot certain symbols that are similar to the Car symbol. The TRS party has submitted proofs of how TRS has lost over 23,000 votes to the Auto symbol in the recent bypolls. Independent candidates who were allotted the ‘auto’ as a symbol polled 7,197 votes in Kollapur, 6,234 in Station Ghanapur, 6,759 in Kamareddy and 3,961 in Adilabad in the last byelections.
A majority of voters in rural areas are illiterate and some of them are old and lack proper eye sight too. There are some election symbols like Auto, Road Roller and Coconut that have a resemblance with Car symbol and are consistently receiving a lot of votes in constituencies contested by TRS.
In spite of TRS submitting the request, the Election Commission, for some strange reason allotted the Auto symbol to an independent candidate named Gali Ravi in Parakala. Ravi ended up getting a total of 3384 votes, which is significant.
This clearly lends credence to the argument that some sort of conspiracy was involved in Parakala.