All arrangements are in place and the poll personnel are going through the final drills as the counting of votes polled during the polls to 17 Assembly segments and two Lok Sabha constituencies will be held at the Acharya Nagarjuna University and Loyola Public School at Nallapadu on Friday.
While counting for seven Assembly segments under the purview of Guntur Lok Sabha constituency will be taken up at the ANU, while the same for seven other Assembly segments under the Narsaraopet Lok Sabha constituency would be taken up at the LPS at Nallapadu.
All the engineering blocks, the Central Block, the Civil and Mechanical Block-1 and 11 at the ANU have been fortified with armed CRPF guards manning the strongrooms where EVMs are stored. The police made it clear that only poll personnel, election agents and media personnel with valid passes would be allowed inside the counting venues.
District Collector S. Suresh Kumar, Superintendent of Police (Guntur Urban) Gopinath Jatty inspected the arrangements. Mr. Suresh Kumar asked the CRPF personnel to be vigilant and conduct the final training session for the poll personnel.
The road leading to the Engineering College has been barricaded and vehicles would be allowed only through the main gate of the ANU. Separate routes have been earmarked for police and poll personnel, media and the micro-observers.
Media centreA media centre has also been set up at the conference hall on the first floor of the Ravindranath Tagore administrative building. Facilities ensuring wi-fi connectivity, power and a slot for Outdoor Broadcast vans have also been provided. The Civil Mechanical block will house the counting booths for Mangalagiri and Tadikonda on the first floor and Guntur East and West on the second floor. In the block-2, counting booths for Prathipadu and Ponnur have been set up. Each room would have seven tables each for Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies. After counting is completed for postal ballots, the EVMs would be opened. Revenue Divisional Officer of Guntur Srirammurthy is overseeing the arrangements at this block.
In the Central Block, the counting booth of Tenali is in place. Revenue Divisional Officer of Tenali, S. Sreenivasa Murthy, who is also Returning Officer for Tenali, conducted the final round of training sessions for the micro-observers.
