385 nominations received for 55 ZPTC seats in Ongole

Ongole: Prakasam District Collector Dr Pola Bhaskara and SP Siddharth Kaushal announced that they have made all arrangements for peaceful conduct of local body elections.

Speaking in a joint press meet, the Collector announced that the scrutiny process of MPTC and ZPTC nominations was complete and the candidates can withdraw their nominations up to 3 pm of Saturday.

He announced they received 176 nominations from the YSRCP, 99 from TDP, 55 from BSP, 27 from Congress, 25 from BJP, 13 from JSP, 6 from CPM and 5 from CPI along with 25 nominations from independents, a total of 385 nominations for 55 ZPTC seats in the district.

He also said they received 3,806 nominations for 742 MPTC seats including 1,937 nominations from YSRCP, 1,334 from TDP, 58 from BJP, 47 from JSP and 22 from CPM and 257 from independents.

He announced that they had already transported 6,537 ballot boxes required for elections to mandal headquarters and ordered for repair of boxes if any. He said they were appointing five members as resource persons for every mandal to train on election process on March 15 and make required arrangements at polling stations by the same day.

The district election officer said the nominations process for Ongole Municipal Corporation, 3 municipalities and 4 Nagar Panchayats in the district concludes on Saturday and the candidates have time up to March 16 for withdrawal of nominations after the scrutiny.

After the polling on March 23, counting will be held on March 27, the collector said and added the elections for 1,035 of 1053 panchayats will be conducted in two phases and they were preparing 10,451 polling stations for election of 10,356 wards.

He said the concerned ROs will release notification for 29 mandals in first phase on March 15 and accept the nominations from March 17 to 19.

He said the final list of candidates will be announced on March 22 and the election will be held on March 27 from 07.00 am to 01.00 pm for conducting the counting and the results will be announced from 02.00 pm on the same day. For the second phase election in 27 mandals, he announced the notification will be issued on March 17, the final list of candidates will be announced on March 24 and the election will be held on March 29 up to 01.00 PM and results will be announced on the same day.

SP Siddharth Kaushal said they were making tight security arrangements for local body elections and added they have already booked 857 bind over cases and taken 1,106 trouble mongers into custody along with offering counselling to 5,535 people.

He said that they have identified 676 polling centres as vulnerable and kept a tight vigil in 271 villages. He warned that if the candidates violate the model code of conduct, they will forfeit the winning seat and the police would take stringent action on the people creating troubles. Election observer Dr Sekhar Babu said the candidates should not spend more than their limit in the elections and action would be initiated on them if they violate the rules. AJC K Narendra Prasad, DRO V Venkata Subbaiah, ZP CEO T Kailash Giriswar, DPO Narayana Reddy and others also participated in the programme.