A day after State Election Commissioner Nilam Sawhney had declared the election schedule for MPTC and ZPTC posts, the district administration has set in the motion for smooth conduct of the polls. The polls were last held in 2013-14.
In the district, there are 651 MPTC seats and out of which 37 have already been unanimously elected and in two places, the candidates have died and fresh dates are awaited. “In total, we will have election for 612 seats,” said Zilla Parishad CEO V. Nagarjuna Sagar.
Coming to ZPTC, there are 39 seats, one has already been unanimously elected and in one place the candidate has died. That leaves 37 seats up for the grabs, in this election.
The poll date has has been set for April 8, with repoll wherever necessary on April 9, and the results will be declared on April 10.
In the district, there are about 2,100 polling stations and about 12,000 staff will be put on poll duty, which included 20% reserve.
The district administration has already identified 179 zonal officers, 310 route officers, 41 field surveillance teams and 68 static teams, to oversee the election process.
Out of the 2,100 polling stations, about 718 have been identified as sensitive and 736 as hyper-sensitive.
Some of these sensitive and hyper-sensitive stations have previous history of some violence and some are located in sensitive Maoist areas, said Mr. Nagarjuna.
Apart from adequate security, each polling station will have five polling staff with one observer. All sensitive and hyper-sensitive stations will have micro-observers and videographers, he said.
More women voters
In the district there are about 17.84 lakh voters with 8.76 lakh men and 9.08 women. This is one among the few districts in the State that has more women voters than men, said the ZP CEO.
Coming to ballot boxes, he said that the requirement is around 5,934 boxes and the district has close to 7,500 boxes.
The boxes are kept in the strongrooms at all mandal headquarters and will be despatched after they are labelled.
The counting, which is scheduled for April 10, will be done at the respective mandal headquarters.
According to the ZP officials, in the last election the polling percentage was around 80% and each polling station has around 800 to 1,000 votes.
In some hyper-sensitive Maoist-affected areas, the polling booths have been moved to safer spots and the staff for such stations, will leave a day earlier.
The district administration will also conduct a one-day training session for all the staff members, in phases.
