After shrill cacophony, campaign falls silent

 ​Hyderabad: Weeks of intensified poll campaigning for the elections to 119 assembly constituencies in Telangana came to an end on Wednesday with parties vying each other to woo the voters through big promises like hike in pension amount, waiver of farm loans, free housing by the ruling TRS and People’s Front. The elections will be held on December 7 and the poll results will be announced on December 11. 

TRS president K Chandrashekar Rao wound up his poll campaign in Gajwel by addressing a public meeting and People’s Front leaders AICC president Rahul Gandhi, TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu attended the last public meeting in Kodad assembly constituency on the last day of the campaigning. Telangana Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar issued clear instructions to the District Election Officers to ensure that no poll campaign should take place within the constituency during the period of 48 hours after closure of polls on Friday evening. 

The total number of voters are 2,80,64,684 which includes 1.41 crore men, 1.39 crore women, 7.04 lakh new voters aged between 18 and 19 and 244 NRI voters. The total polling stations are 32,815. The Commission appointed 37,556 presiding officers, 74,873 assistant presiding officers and 37,594 polling officers to look after the poll-related affairs in all the polling booths.

Live webcast facility was provided in every polling booth and deployed required engineering staff to address technical glitches, if any, arise during the polling day. Release of opinion polls and other election-related matters and transmission of bulk Short Message Services (SMS) is prohibited during the period of 48 hours before polling.
 
The total number of candidates in the fray are 1,821. Congress is contesting in 99 assembly segments, TRS(119), BJP(118), BSP (107), CPI(M- 26,) NCP(22), TDP(13), AIMIM(8) and CPI is fighting in 3 assembly segments. 

Taking into consideration the intelligence inputs, the Election Commission reduced the election timing by one hour from 7 am to 4 pm in 13 extremist-affected assembly constituencies Sirpur, Chennur (SC reserved), Bellapally (SC), Macherial, Asifabad (ST), Manthani, Bhupalpally, Mulgu (ST), Pinapaka (ST), Yellandu (ST), Kothagudem, Aswaraopeta (ST) the ST reserved Bhadrachalam assembly constituency. In the rest of the 106 segments, poll timing will be between 7 am and 5 pm. 

Till date, Rs 109 crore cash and liquor at the cost of Rs 10.87 crore was seized in the state from the day the model code came into effect in Telangana. Required police personnel from state and paramilitary forces were deployed in all assembly segments to maintain law and order till the completion of the counting of votes.