Panchayat Raj polls in 3 phases

​Hyderabad: The Telangana State Election Commission has issued notification for conducting election to the gram panchayats in the state from January 7 to January 30 in three phases. Announcing this at a news conference here on Tuesday, TSEC commissioner V Nagi Reddy said that the activity for the first phase would begin on January 7 and would continue till 21. The second phase would begin on January 11 and would end on 25. The third phase would begin on January 16 and would end by January 30.

Election would be held for 12,751 sarpanch posts and for 1.13 lakh ward members. The results of the election would be announced on the same day of the polling. Polling would take place on Jan 21 for first phase, on 25 for second phase and on Jan 30 for the third phase from 7 am to 1 pm. The counting of votes would be held in the afternoon and the results would be announced immediately. 

The State Election Commissioner said that None of the Above (NOTA) symbol has been added to the ballot papers. In the first phase, 4,480, in second phase 4,137 and in third phase 4,115 gram panchayats would go to polls, he said.
He informed that the candidate who contests for sarpanch post has to pay Rs 2,000 as deposit in general seat and Rs 1,000 in case of reserved seat. Ward member contestant has to pay Rs 500 for general seat and Rs 250 for reserved seat as deposit.

As far as election expenditure is concerned, a candidate could spend up to Rs 2.5 lakh if the population of the panchayat is more than 5,000. The limit on poll expenditure would be Rs 1.5 lakh per candidate in the panchayat where the population is less than 5,000.

The elections to the panchayats have been taken up as the High Court has directed that they should be completed by January 10. Due to the Assembly election, the SEC was unable to take up the activity.  Due to the court directions on the BC reservations also the SEC could not hold elections to GPs which were due to have been held in July, last year. The state government recently issued orders reducing the BC reservations to follow the instructions of the court.