Telangana Government to spend Rs 50 crore on urban local body polls
HYDERABAD: As many as 3,149 wards in the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in Telangana would go to polls soon for which pre-election works are going at a brisk pace and would be completed within few days time.
According to Election Authority and Director on Municipal Administration Department TK Sreedevi, the exercise for delimitation of wards for 129 municipalities and three municipalities was completed and a final notification was issued by the Director of Municipal Administration Department.
About 2,279 wards come under 129 municipalities and 170 wards in three municipal corporations (Nizamabad, Karimnagar and Ramagundam) in the state covering 70 Assembly constituencies. Speaking to Express, she said that the conduct of ULB polls is going to be a big challenge as these elections are being conducted for a large number of municipalities. Around `50 crore would be required for the conduct of the ULB polls, she said.
She said as, against the total population of 61,85,832 in these 132 ULBs, about 52,56,179 have been identified as eligible voters. A total of 8,542 polling stations have been identified and over 42,000 polling staff would be required for the conduct of polls. The Nizamabad Municipal Corporation has the highest number of voters (2.99 lakh), followed by Karimnagar (2.50 lakh) and Ramagundam (1.67 lakh) respectively.
Auxiliary polling stations to be set up
An additional auxiliary polling station would be established at any polling station which has more than 800 voters as the Telangana State Election Commission (TSEC) has decided to conduct the ensuing municipal polls using ballot papers instead of electronic voting machines (EVMs). As announced earlier, the preparation of a draft-ward wise list of polling stations by Returning Officers will be on July 14, the publication of the list of polling booths will be July 15. The deadline for registering claims, objections and suggestions is 5 pm on July 17. Disposal of claims and objections will be July 18. The final list of publication of polling stations will be on July 19. At least 14 days would be required for conducting the polls, she added.