The total voter strength in the State has gone up by more than 3 lakhs after the November 9 deadline for submission of applications for enrolment as voters for the forthcoming elections to the Legislative Assembly.
The voter strength which was 2.73 crore at the time of publication of the final voters’ list on October 12 increased to 2.76 crore at present, according to Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar. Of these, 1.39 crore male and 1.36 crore are female voters while the number of third gender voters stood at 2,615.
“This is little less than 2.83 crore registered during the previous elections in 2014 and the reduction is because of various reasons including merger of some mandals into neighbouring Andhra Pradesh,” he said.
Not many complaints
Checks by the State election authorities revealed that there were 1.16 lakh voters with double-multiple entries in the final voter list and the names of close to 24,000 found under mutliple entries category would be struck down by the time of publication of supplementary list. Mr. Rajat Kumar said the election authorities had received “not many” complaints of violation of model code of conduct so far.
Of the 98 complaints received so far, 38 files were closed as they were not found to be strong and reports were awaited in case of 48 other complaints. Twelve other complaints relating to administrative issues like release of cheques under the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund had been referred to the Election Commission of India.
The election authorities focussed attention on the complaints of distribution of money and liquor to the electors and cash and goods estimated to be worth ₹77.62 crore had been seized so far.
9,530 arms deposited
Of these, cash to the tune of ₹66.96 crore had been seized while 2.63 lakh litres of liquor valued at ₹5.98 crore and goods (gold, silver and other items) worth ₹4.3 crore had been confiscated. In all, 9,530 licensed arms were deposited and 1,177 police nakas had been set up across the State while 4,038 unauthorised liquor shops had been closed. Over 3.154 persons were arrested in relation with election offences.
The election authority is promoting use of cVIGIL App by voters to bring out violations of model code of conduct and 2,251 complaints had been filed so far. Of these, 1,279 complaints were disposed of and 891 cases had been dropped as they were found to be non-serious in nature while 81 cases were pending.
Replying to queries on the complaints lodged against the terse language used by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and some of his Cabinet colleagues, he said the election authorities would examine the complaints and issue notices to the concerned wherever required. “The rules will be same for all the contesting candidates,” he said.
To another query, Mr. Rajat Kumar said he was not under any pressure from any political party and was discharging his duties in accordance with the existing rules. To a query on caste-based meetings convened by some political parties, the TRS in particular, he appealed to political parties not to organise caste/community based meetings as it is against rules.
