Preparations in Full Swing for Local Body Elections, Says State Election Commissioner C. Parthasarathi

Gadwal: The State Election Commissioner, C. Parthasarathi, emphasized the importance of thorough preparations for the upcoming local body elections. He conducted a review through a video conference on Thursday with district collectors, additional collectors of local bodies, ZP CEOs, DPOs, and election returning officers.

During the review, Commissioner Parthasarathi made it clear that the local body elections would be completed within the next four to five months. He outlined that the elections would be held in three phases, starting with the Gram Panchayat elections, followed by the MPTC and ZP TC elections, and finally, the Municipal elections. He urged the district election officers, especially the collectors, to focus meticulously on election arrangements, keeping in mind the sensitive nature of local body elections, which are conducted in a non-partisan manner, unlike assembly or parliamentary elections. The Commissioner advised taking necessary steps to ensure that the elections are conducted peacefully, transparently, and without any complaints.

He directed the immediate initiation of processes such as voter list preparation and polling station mapping, ensuring completion within the stipulated time frame. The draft notification for the voter list will be released on September 6, with objections to be received, and the final voter list will be published on September 21. Commissioner Parthasarathi stressed the importance of vigilance at every stage to avoid any mistakes.

The Commissioner highlighted the active role of additional collectors of local bodies in the election process, in accordance with the Panchayati Raj Act of 2018. He instructed the preparation of voter lists for Gram Panchayats based on the assembly constituency-wise voter lists, ensuring that no eligible voter’s name is omitted. He also suggested holding meetings with representatives of political parties to discuss the voter list and polling station arrangements.

Identifying problematic and highly problematic polling stations and ensuring peaceful, transparent, and impartial elections were among the necessary arrangements mentioned by the Commissioner. He recommended capping the number of voters in each polling station to 600 and establishing an additional polling station if the number exceeds 650. Precautions should be taken to ensure that voters from one ward do not have voting rights in another and that the votes of family members are listed together.

The Commissioner emphasized the utmost importance of election arrangements and warned that negligence would not be tolerated. He instructed officials to arrange ballot boxes and other election materials, identify polling staff, organize training sessions for them, and allocate duties at polling stations through randomization.

District Collector B..M. Santosh, Additional Collector Narsing Rao, DPO Shyam Sundar, RDO Ramachander, and others participated in the video conference.