The third and final phase of elections to gram panchayats witnessed a smooth conduct on Wednesday.
State Election Commissioner P. Ramakanth Reddy told reporters that the information from all districts was that elections were peaceful. The first two phases of election were held on July 23 and 27 respectively.
The overall poll percentage in the State during the three-phase poll was 85.73 per cent. Adilabad reported the lowest poll percentage of 76.59 per cent due to heavy rains, Mr. Ramakanth Reddy said.
The model code of conduct that came into force from July 3 with the announcement of elections, will cease to be in force from Wednesday midnight, except in a few gram panchayats where the election process has been renotified or altered due to various reasons like heavy rains, floods, death of contesting candidates, snatching away of nomination papers, erroneous supply of ballot papers etc. In those areas, the election process will be completed by August 13. In the 18 panchayats where repoll was ordered due to auctioning of posts, elections would be held on August 8. In the first phase, 5803 panchayats went to polls, 6,971 in the second, and 5,943 in the third phase.
