Repoll today in 56 polling stations

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JULY 13. The State Election Commission here on Friday ordered repoll in 56 polling stations spread over eight of 11 districts which went to the polls yesterday under the first phase, after duly verifying complaints of irregularities received against these booths from election officials.

Repoll will be held from 7 am to 5 pm on Saturday. Guntur district, which saw two police firing incidents at Rompicherla and Amaravathi yesterday, accounted for the largest number of repolling stations at 19. Warangal will have repolling in 12 booths, Mahabubnagar 7, Chittoor 6, Ranga Reddy 5, Nellore 4, Visakhapatnam 2 and Srikakulam only one.

At Rompicherla, the voting exercise is being repeated in six polling stations. Kulkacharla in Ranga Reddy district comes next with four booths.

Mr. D. R. Garg, secretary of the Commission, said that extra forces were being deployed and heavy bandobust arrangements made around the booths in Guntur district. Under the existing convention, a different set of polling officials were posted at all the polling stations.

Mr. Garg referred to the complaints made against Ministers and MLAs of the ruling party, and said the commission did not receive any written complaint against them except in the case of the Technical Education Minister, Mr. A. Rajendra Prasad.

The Collector and the SP of Guntur district submitted a report about him in relation to his movements on the polling day, and the same was under scrutiny.

One charge against him was that he had used his official car instead of a private one and that while polling was on, he had moved by that vehicle followed by a convoy of Tata Sumos. Regarding the Home Minister, Mr. T. Devender Goud, there was no complaint. Meanwhile, elaborate arrangements were made for the second phase of polling on Sunday for electing 544 ZPTC and 6,439 MPTC members from 1,800 and 19,119 candidates respectively in the fray in 11 districts.

The districts are Adilabad, Anantapur, Cuddapah, East Godavari, Karimnagar, Krishna, Kurnool, Medak, Nalgonda, Prakasam and Vizianagaram. A total of 1.96 crore voters will exercise their franchise.

Already 15 ZPTC members and 515 MPTC members who would have sought the mandate under this phase, have been elected unanimously.

The Director-General of Police, Mr. H. J. Dora, in a press note said that the police would be heavily deployed at all the 24,695 polling stations of the second phase spread over 575 mandals apart from 243 special striking force units and 2,615 mobile parties at strategic locations.

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Section  : Southern States
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