Hyderabad: The two Telugu states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are going to polls on Thursday with the Election Commission (EC) making adequate arrangements.
While in Telangana, the election will be held for 17 Lok Sabha seats, in Andhra Pradesh, voters will exercise their franchise to 175 MLAs and 25 MPs.
The EC has made elaborate arrangements for a smooth and fair election in both the states.
Telangana has over 2.96 crore voters who would decide the fate of 443 candidates. Of them, over 170 are farmers from Nizamabad who have entered the fray to highlight their plight.
Among the voters, there are 1,504 members belonging to the third gender, 11,320 service voters and 1,731 non-resident Indians.
Over 79,000 EVMs, 42,000 control units, 46,000 Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT)s are being used for the election for which 2 lakh officials have been deployed across 34,604 polling stations.
In Andhra Pradesh, 2,118 candidates are in the fray for the 175 Assembly seats, while 319 contenders are testing their luck for 25 parliamentary seats.
There are over 3.93 crore voters, of whom 10 lakh are first-timers. They will exercise their franchise in 46,120 polling stations.
Telangana’s Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar urged residents to check their names in voter lists before leaving for their respective polling station, adding 11 identity cards could be used along with voter slips for exercising
their voting rights.
Kumar said 12 EVMs were being set up in each polling station in Nizamabad.
“We have laid adequate focus on the Nizamabad LS segment which had over 180 candidates and the Naxal-dominated areas where additional forces are being used,” the CEO said.
He added polling will begin at 7am and continue till 5pm in all segments, apart from Nizamabad (8am to 6pm), Maoist-affected areas (7am to 4pm).
For smooth and fair polls, 145 companies of forces have been deployed in addition to 55,000 police personnel in the state.
In Andhra, voting will be held between 7am and 5pm, except the Araku segment which will see polling from 7am to 4pm.
As many as 5,27,000 disabled individuals have registered their names as voters for whom the EC has made special arrangements. There are 56,908 service voters and 5,323 NRI voters. The poll panel is also using photos of candidates on the ballots for first time along with VVPATs.
The fate of all the candidates would be known on May 23 after the seven-phase election across the country comes to an end.
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