The stage is set for the first general election in Telangana where polling to the 17 Lok Sabha constituencies will be held in the first phase on Thursday.
Over 2.96 crore voters will exercise their franchise in the 17 seats, 12 of which are general constituencies, three reserved for the Scheduled Castes and two for the Scheduled Tribes. This is the first general election to be held in Telangana since the formation of the State on June 2, 2014. The previous Lok Sabha elections were held on April 30, 2014 -- more than a month ahead of the appointed day for bifurcation of the erstwhile united Andhra Pradesh.
The election will be conducted through 34,604 polling stations spread across the State with the election authority deploying close to three lakh personnel - employees, volunteers and police/armed forces – to monitor the peaceful conduct of the election. More than 1.5 lakh government staff, 145 companies of the Central armed forces, 55,000 State police personnel and over 20,000 volunteers in addition to the support staff like drivers and others have been deployed for the conduct of the elections. A majority of the staff reached their respective polling stations late on Wednesday evening.
Record contestants
The deployment of staff had been necessitated owing to the huge number of 185 contestants in the fray in Nizamabad Lok Sabha constituency.
The EC made arrangements for the conduct of the election through EVMs – 12 ballot units, one control unit and one VVPAT machine – for the constituency and this required deployment of additional personnel, including 600 engineers who had been posted there till the completion of polling.
“There are seven strong rooms arranged as the number of EVMs are more and two additional polling officials are allotted to each of the 1,788 polling stations in the constituency,” Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar said.
Asked about the incidence of Maoists, especially in the light of Tuesday’s incident where a BJP MLA was killed by the extremists, he said elaborate security arrangements had been made to prevent scope for occurrence of any untoward incident.
“There was similar attack before the previous Assembly elections in Sukma of neighbouring Chhattisgarh, but election in Telangana witnessed a significant voter turnout,” he said. The CEO said mock polling would start at 5.30 a.m. in all polling stations across the State, and voting would start at 7 a.m., except in Nizamabad.
In Nizamabad constituency where there are more number of EVMs positioned, it would take close to two hours for the conduct of the mock poll and hence, it was decided to start voting by 8 a.m. and it would come to a close at 6 p.m.
All the voters who stand in queues before the closing hours would be given an opportunity to cast their votes and the officials concerned had been asked to distribute slips to them accordingly. The polling staff and machinery had been dispatched to 15 of the constituencies by Wednesday evening and the process is expected to be completed by night in Nizamabad and Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituencies.