Vizianagaram: 60 sarpanches elected unanimously

Vizianagaram: Second phase elections will be held for 415 village panchayats in Vizianagaram district on Saturday. However, 60 sarpanches have been elected unanimously.

The polling has to be conducted for 355 posts of sarpanches and 929 candidates are in fray. There are 5,239 candidates in race for 929 ward member posts.

In all, 6,19,834 voters are going to exercise their franchise in the second phase and decide the fate of the contestants. Ramabhadrapuram GP is the largest panchayati with 8,302 votes and S Seetharampuram is the smallest panchayat with 215 votes only. All the returning officers, polling officers and assistant poling officers are trained on this election process and they were allotted to polling stations along with stationery and other poling material.

B Rajakumari, SP, stated that 114 poling stations were identified as sensitive stations and 58 hyper-sensitive stations. While 56 stations are in Maoist-affected areas, 10 are at hill-top areas. While 16,950 persons were booked under bind-over cases, 200 cases were booked on several persons under the limits of different police station limits. As many as 3,000 police persons have been deployed for election duty. Vigilance has been intensified and all the inter-State borders were tightened to restrict the flow of liquor and cash, she said.

District election officer and Collector M Hari Jawaharlal instructed the control room staff to furnish accurate information to people. On Friday, he visited the control room and reviewed the situation there. He advised the staff to get the accurate information from the mandal-level offices and furnish the same to media and people every hour.