Polling is underway in 515 Zilla Parishad Territorial constituencies and seven,220 Mandal Parishad Territorial constituencies of Andhra Pradesh. Polling started at 7 am this morning and can proceed until 5 pm. As of 11 am, 21.65 % voting was recorded.
The elections are being held following an order of a division bench of the AP High Court comprising Chief Justice Arup Kumar Goswami and Justice C Praveen Kumar on Wednesday that put aside the one decide order and allowed the State Election Commission to conduct elections to MPTCs and ZPTCs as scheduled on April 8.
However, the courtroom directed the SEC to not take up counting and declaration of outcomes pending disposal of the petitions. A day earlier than on Tuesday, the one decide bench of Justice U Durga Prasad Rao had stayed the election notification stating that the mannequin code of conduct was not enforced as directed by the Supreme Court. Terming the elections ‘unlawful’, the opposition Telugu Desam Party had introduced a boycott of the polls.
The State Election Commission has categorised 6,314 of the whole 27,751 polling stations as hyper-sensitive, and 6,492 as delicate. As many as 247 polling stations are extremist-affected. Arrangements for webcasting have been made in 3,538 polling stations, in line with officers.
