HYDERABAD: For franchising the votes by the electors, as many as eight Assembly constituencies out of a total of 119 ACs in Telangana require over 1,000 each EVMs mostly in Greater Hyderabad and its outskirts for the upcoming Telangana Assembly polls on November 30. The Assemblies include L B Nagar, Malkajgiri, Serilingampally, Uppal, Medchal, Maheshwaram, Rajendra Nagar and Khammam.
The highest number of Ballot Units would be used in the L B Nagar Assembly constituency where as many as 1,719 EVMs would be pressed into service in the L B Nagar segment as 48 candidates are in the fray including the None Of The Above (NOTA) option. The second highest EVMs will be used in Malkajgiri Assembly Constituency (1,287) followed by Serilingampally (1,276), Uppal (1,254), Medchal (1,168) Maheshwaram (1,084) and Rajendranagar (1,084), Khammam (1,065), Gajwel (963), Munugode (921), Kamareddy (798), Kodad (888), Patancheru (810), Kukatpally (836) and Nampally (855).
The Election Commission of India (ECI) based on the list of contestants in each of the constituencies has sanctioned additional ballot units as required. A final additional count of 14,500 EVMs has been allocated to 16 districts as per the requirement submitted by the Telangana Chief Electoral Officer (CEO). With this, a total of 59,779 EVMs will be used in the ensuing elections in as many as 35,655 polling stations in all the 119 Assembly constituencies in the state.
Sources said that among the 119 constituencies, L B Nagar is the only constituency in the state where four BUs will be pressed into service as the constituency will see the highest number of contestants with 48 candidates and one additional NOTA option.
An EVM consists of two units - a Control Unit (CU) and a Balloting Unit (BU). EVMs can cater to a maximum of 64 candidates (including NOTA). There is a provision for 16 candidates in one balloting unit. If the total number of candidates exceeds 16, a second balloting unit can be linked in series to the first balloting unit and as follows.
In seven assembly constituencies, three EVMs would be pressed into service as more than 32 plus candidates are contesting the polls in Gajwel, Kamareddy, Malkajgiri, Uppal, Nampally, Kodad, Munugode, Khammam and Palair. In around 57 assembly constituencies two EVMs would be required as more than 16 candidates are in the fray.
As more than 50 per cent of assembly constituencies require more than two ballot units, additional EVMs have been procured by the Telangana CEO office through ECI. The additional units has been procured from Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), CEO authorities said. Sufficient ECIL engineers have been deputed to all districts who will stay there till the end of polling to address any technical glitches in EVMs if they arise.
All the DEOs have been informed that sufficient EVMs are available in districts and EVM commissioning will be done on November 23 and 24 in all districts in the presence of representatives of political parties for which advance information has been given to representatives of all political parties and contesting candidates. Further, Observers will also be attending the same.