Over 42 lakh voters are going to exercise their franchise in 4,581 polling stations spreading across the East Godavari district to elect 19 MLAs and three MPs during the general elections scheduled to be held on Thursday.
As many as 223 candidates are in the poll fray from the Assembly segments and another 36 from the Lok Sabha constituencies in the district. Arrangements are being made for webcasting of the poll procedure at 1,437 polling stations that have been identified as vulnerable and critical. Polling will be held between 7 a.m and 6 p.m. in all the segments except the Rampachodavaram Assembly constituency located in the Agency area, where the polling will be ended by 4 p.m. “There is no need of opening additional polling stations at Rampachodavaram, as the constituency accounts for 397 polling stations, which is the highest number in the district,” Collector and Returning Officer Kartikeya Misra told the reporters here on Tuesday.
He said that special arrangements were being made for the physically and visually challenged voters and efforts were on to provide them transportation to the polling stations. “In the absence of EPIC, the voters can furnish either their Aadhaar, passport, bank passbook or employee ID card issued by the government, public sector undertaking or public limited companies,” he said. A control room had been set up in the Collectorate to monitor the poll process and the election staff would be deputed to the polling stations concerned by Wednesday afternoon.