Officials busy with poll duties since Oct 18

Vikarabad: Assembly elections were conducted in December and Panchayat polls in January. Officials were seen busy in February with the corrections to voter list for municipal elections and now MLC elections are scheduled to be conducted in March.

Lok Sabha election schedule was announced by Central Election Commission and the election will be conducted in seven phases across the country. Telangana will go to polls in the first phase on April 11. The EC would release the notification on March 18 and the last date for filing nominations is March 25. Scrutiny of the nominations would take place on March 26 and the last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 28. The results would be announced on May 23.

The two Lok Sabha seats - Chevella Parliament constituency comprising districts Parigi, Tandur and Vikarabad, and Mahbubnagar Parliament constituency consisting of Kodangal.

There are 8, 84,256 voters as per latest list out of which 4, 42,299 are male and 4, 41,599 females. About 2,17,412 voters are there in Vikarabad, while 2,10,736 in Tandur, 2,41,843 under Parigi and 2,13,922 in Kodangal.

As many as 2,000 citizens submitted applications during a recent special voter enrolment programme and officials verified about 1,000 applications. As many as 43,732 new voters have registered their names in the voters list. As many as 31 polling centers will be increased for Lok Sabha elections when compared to Assembly elections. The number increased to 1,126 from 1,095. Earlier, there was a polling center for every 1,400 voters, but now there will be a polling centre for every 1,300 voters in urban areas and for each 1,100 in rural areas.

According to district officials, there is a need of as many as 1,850 EVMs and 1850 VVPATs for smooth conduct of the polls. So far 1,452 EVMs and 1,581 VVPATs arrived in the district. The machines were stored at the Collector's office. Remaining EVMs and VVPATs will arrive in the district soon. Officials are estimating that there is a need of 7,000 staff to conduct the elections in the district and about 6,000 staff discharged their duties during recent Assembly elections. There are chances for increasing staff in view of increasing polling centers. Election duty training for assistant, sectorial, district master trainers, polling officials and police officers completed recently.

About 76.93 percent polling was registered in recent Assembly elections while Kodangal tops the list with 81.43 percent followed by Tandur, Parigi and Vikarabad.

A total of 6,45,806 voters cast their vote out of 8, 40,181 voters, of which men are 3, 25,042 and female 3, 20,764.

MP Konda Vishweshwer Reddy contested for Chevella seat on TRS ticket while Karthik Reddy from Congress and Virender Goud from TDP. Vishweshwer Reddy recently joined the Congress party.