Ongole: Arrangements in place for 3rd phase panchayat polls

Ongole: The Prakasam District Collector Dr Pola Bhaskara on Tuesday said that they have made all arrangements for the smooth polling and counting in the third phase of the panchayat elections in the Prakasam District.

The Collector inspected the arrangements at the ARC & GVR Government High School and ZP Girls High School in Singarayakonda on Tuesday and inspected the arrangements. He ordered the officials to work with coordination so that no issue of law and order arises.

He said that there are more than 10000 voters in four panchayats for the third phase election. He said that the Prakasam SP has put special focus on the sensitive and hyper-sensitive polling stations to maintain law and order.

He said that the ZP CEO, DPO, tahsildars, MPDOs and other officials are working in coordination with each other for the peaceful conduct of elections.

The DPO GV Narayana Reddy said that they are conducting elections for sarpanches in a total of 299 village panchayats and 2866 ward members in the third phase.

Apart from the zero nominations for 1 sarpanch and 14 ward member positions, he said that 62 sarpanches and 1201 ward members are elected unanimously in them. For the remaining 236 sarpanches positions, there are 622 people contesting while 3479 candidates are in the contest for 1651 ward member positions, he added.

The DPO said that they have allotted 2902 polling stations for the 262277 male and 259696 female and 11 other voters while identifying 222 polling stations as sensitive, 145 as hypersensitive and 357 as normal affected polling stations.

The Collector also announced that as the Election Commission took the decision to continue the municipal election process, they will allow the candidates to withdraw nominations on March 2 and 3, and will start the symbol allocation process after it.