Unlike the last election, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) would ensure that Returning Officers (ROs) for the forthcoming elections carry out their functions from the constituencies assigned to them only.
During the last polls, there were four ROs of different constituencies of Hyderabad district operating from the GHMC head office which not only inconvenienced the poll arrangement process, but also disrupted the regular functioning of the civic body at the headquarters.
GHMC Commissioner and Hyderabad District Election Officer (DEO) Somesh Kumar said this time, designated ROs would carry out assigned duties from their respective constituencies and not the head office. “We are making arrangements to have them available locally so that it will be easy to do poll related work without much travel,” he said.
The ROs offices were being located in the GHMC office space available in a given constituency and in case where no such facility was available, a government building was being identified.
Arrangements onAll the statutory teams for the run-up to the poll including expenditure observers, police observers, general observers apart from teams such as flying squads, static surveillance teams and video surveillance teams have almost been constituted for the district.
“Expenditure teams are already formed and their full time monitoring will start from the day of first nomination,” he said.
According to the officials, the flying squad teams were being formed with either an executive magistrate or Deputy Tahsildar and a police representative in the form of either Assistant Sub-Inspector or Head Constable and assisted by three to four Constables.
At the same time, the static surveillance teams would have a Revenue Officer along with the police component, he said.
