Seventy four sarpanches were elected unanimously in the panchayat elections in the district after withdrawal of nominations on Wednesday, said an official press release on Thursday.
Election will be held for 827 out of the 920 sarpanch posts on July 23. As many as 2,677 candidates are in the fray.
More than one fourth of the ward members were elected unanimously. Out of 9,214 ward member posts, 2,444 saw unanimous election and nominations were not filed for 150 wards. All of them, except two, are in the Agency area. Election will be held for 6,620 wards and 15,103 contestants will vie for the posts.
Election to 19 panchayats, all in the Agency area, was postponed for different reasons, District Panchayat Officer K. Sudhakar said.
In 65 panchayats, sarpanches and ward members were elected unanimously.
There are a total of 15,48,800 voters in the 920 panchayats and 7,86,745 of them are women and 7,62,055 are men.
Meanwhile, the Telugu Desam claimed that sarpanches supported by it had been elected unanimously in 29 panchayats and Congress won in 25 panchayats while the YSR Congress could win in seven, including Petla Satyavathi, mother of film director Puri Jagannadh and YSRC constituency coordinator Umasankar. The CPI(M) won in one panchayat.
In the remaining panchayats, candidates who are not supported by any political party have won.
Paderu Revenue Division would go to polls during the first phase, on July 23. It has 244 sarpanch posts.
Of them, four were elected unanimously and elections are not being held for 19 panchayats while 1,084 contestants will fight for the 221 sarpanch posts.
3,502 in fray
A total of 797 ward member posts were decided unanimously and nominations were not filed for 148 posts, leaving 1,501 out of 2,446 posts in the contest. There are 3,502 contestants for ward member posts.
