Telangana gets ready for Panchayat Raj polls in July

Hyderabad:  The Telangana government has hastened the official process for the conduct of Panchayat Raj elections by July end. State Chief Secretary SK Joshi on Wednesday instructed the District Collectors to complete the enumeration of voters and finalise BC, SC and ST reservations without any delay. The Chief Secretary has also set June second week as deadline for the publication of voters’ list in every poll-bound village.  

The head of the state administration conducted a special meeting with the district authorities at Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s camp office – Pragati Bhavan here. Officials said that Joshi asked the officials to make foolproof arrangements for the conduct of elections. 

As the local body elections are being held on non-party basis, the Chief Secretary instructed the officials to pay more attention to maintaining law and order in the politically-sensitive areas in coordination with the police department. 

The officials of the Panchayat Raj department were instructed to announce the reserved wards and panchayats under BC, Sc and ST category at the earliest. The officials were also asked to seek public opinion on the finalization of the reserved segments before announcing the list. 
The officials informed the Chief Secretary that the draft electoral rolls for the local body elections were ready. 

As many as 1.5 crore voters will exercise their franchise in the polls. The final electoral rolls would be ready by June 15. Ballot papers will be printed at district level under the supervision of Returning Officers. 

Earlier, State Election Commissioner V Nagi Reddy also held a high-level meeting attended by Collectors, SPs and district Panchayat Raj officials. He asked the officials to make all necessary arrangements for the smooth conduct of the polls and set up a strong mechanism to help conduct MPTC and ZPTC (Mandal Parishad and Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency) elections due in 2019. The officials were also asked to launch all the schemes pending in the districts before issuing of the election notification. Reddy cautioned the officials against taking any controversial decisions.  

The Election Commissioner directed the officials to prepare a comprehensive strategy for the conduct of the elections. Police should be on alert and additional forces will be called from neighbouring states, if required, he said.