Kakinada: Administration gears up to hold polls to local bodies

Kakinada: District Administration is making all preparation to conduct elections to local bodies in East Godavari district. Panchayat elections will be held after conducting polls to Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTCs) and Zill Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTCs), according to official sources. The Zilla Parishad officials are preparing voters list. They have already submitted the list of polling booths to District Collector D Muralidhara Reddy.

There are 62 ZPTCs and 1,184 MPTCs in the district. The reservations are yet to be finalised. ``All arrangements are being made for conducting ZPTC and MPTC elections. We sent a list to the government regarding the reservations. After getting instructions from the government, the final list of reservations will be made public'' said the Zilla Parishad Chief Executive Officer M Jyothi. She said that there are 32,52,069 electorate in the district, including 16,18,906 male and 16,3,049 female voters.

Meanwhile, State Election Commissioner Ramesh Kumar instructed the officials to take steps for holding local body elections for ZPTC, MPTC and Panchayats. The Panchayat Elections would be held in three phases by taking Revenue Division as one unit. The draft voters list had been published. Panchayat polls would be held from 7 am to 12 pm and the counting would be taken up from 2 pm. Central forces would be deployed in sensitive areas, he said.

The District Collector said the merging of 23 villages into Rajahmundry has been proposed by the government and clarifications have been yet to come.