• Home

Andhra voters to exercise franchise four times in five weeks

The calendar of events for Andhra Pradesh in the next couple of months is packed with elections, and more elections.

The entire state is in the grip of election fever what with polls for municipal and Panchayat Raj bodies preceding the simultaneous polls to the assembly and Lok Sabha.

Beginning March 30, voters in the state will be heading to polling booths four times in five weeks.

The single-phase polls will be held for 146 municipalities and 10 municipal corporations, covering over 10 million voters, on March 30. On April 6, over 14,000 Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTCs) and 1,100 Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTCs), spread over 22 districts, will go to polls.

The outcome of these elections, to be held on party basis, will be a pointer to the public mood in the wake of bifurcation of the state and the birth of Telangana, the country’s 29th state on June 2. Simultaneous polls will be held to the assembly and Lok Sabha in two phases: April 30 in Telangana including Hyderabad and May 7 in Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra regions, jointly referred to as Seemandhra. While the elections are being held in the combined state, the central government has fixed June 2 as the “Appointed Date” for the new state of Telangana to come into existence. The two new assemblies will be in place by June 2.

The counting of votes for municipalities and municipal corporations will be taken up on
April 2 while the results of local bodies’ elections will be declared on April 8. However, elections to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation would be held later this year. These polls are seen as a “semi-final” ahead of the general elections as they are expected to serve as a barometer to measure the public pulse. Several political parties are wary of the polls to the local bodies and sought their postponement, citing logistic problems. They are finding it difficult to select candidates at short notice for the series of polls.

The state government has been postponing municipal polls for the last three-and-a-half years on various grounds after the term of the elected bodies expired in September 2010. Soon after the state government sent the final list of reservations in all the 156 municipalities and corporations, the State Election Commission swung into action and prepared the election schedule on a war-footing on the direction of the high court.

news@khaleejtimes.com