For the first time in the district, efforts are on to link the Aadhaar cards to voter identity cards, ahead of the bye-election to Tirupati Assembly constituency scheduled to be held on Feb. 13.
While there are close to 3 lakh voters in the constituency, linkage has been achieved to the tune of 50 per cent and the remaining is expected to be completed in the first week of February. About 256 polling booths are being arranged for the election and 308 electronic voting machines (EVMs) will be in place to let the voters exercise their franchise.
Collector Siddharth Jain held a review meeting on the election code here on Wednesday along with Superintendent of Police (Tirupati Urban) Gopinath Jatti and Revenue Divisional Officer V. Veerabrahmaiah. He announced that flying squads, election expenditure committee, video surveillance teams, accounting teams, cost control room and call centre to monitor expenditure would be in place for the election.
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An 1800-strong contingent of policemen, including three Additional Superintendents, eight Deputy Superintendents, 30 inspectors, 70 sub-inspectors, will guard the election process. “We are installing eight check posts in the border areas,” Mr. Jain said. It may be noted here that Chittoor shares border with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and hence poses challenge to the authorities in preventing cross-border movement of men and material. In view of the election code, the government staff embarked on the task of masking statues of political leaders and removing the graffiti of the parties, including banners, flags, cut-outs, signboards and festoons.
Meanwhile, no nominations were received on Wednesday, the third day. TDP candidate M. Suguna met the TDP leader Saikam Jayachandra Reddy at his residence and sought the support of his sympathisers. Mr. Reddy assured all support to her.