Hyderabad: Addressing the press on Tuesday, the District Election Officer, M Dana Kishore, said that all arrangements were completed for the upcoming Assembly elections in the state. Arrangements for both voting and counting have been completed in Hyderabad. While addressing the press, he stated that 3,873 presiding officers, 11,619 polling officers and 661 micro-observers have been deployed on duty. Measures have been taken for live webcasting from all polling stations. 

The District Election Officer stated that 4,988 postal ballots have been printed without any errors and have been distributed to the staff on election duty. More distributions are in process. He said, “Voter slips have been distributed to electors for identifying their polling stations. Over 19 lakh PVC EPIC cards were distributed to the newly-enrolled voters.” He also stated that 313 candidates are contesting in this year’s polls from the city of Hyderabad itself.      

Overall, 3,873 polling stations have been set up in Hyderabad, which hosts 15 constituencies. 40,57,488 voters including 21,10,364 men and 19,46,780 women are expected to cast their vote.  

A voting application called Voter Accessibility Application for the differently-abled has been designed for exclusively for the the physically-challenged individuals to cast votes. The DEO stated that 18,042 individuals have enrolled themselves to cast votes. Around 150 vehicles have also been arranged for the citizens to travel to voting stations.  

Police authorities have set up surveillance cameras at critical polling stations. 532 polling stations have been classified as critical and 17 have been labelled as vulnerable. 66 of these polling stations are located in Chairminar and Yakuthpura constituencies and 57 stations in Chandrayangutta constituency. In all these places, a micro-observer has been appointed. A team of 21 companies of police including officers from Central Reserve Police Froce, Sashastra Seema Bal, Rapid Action Force and neighbouring states will be on duty in the city on election day to avoid unwanted situations. Anjani Kumar, city police commissioner, commented on the issue of bribing and said, “For violating Model Code of Conduct, the city police had seized Rs 23.81 crore in cash apart from liquor, drugs and gold/silver during their enforcements.”