Tight surveillance, foolproof arrangements in place for Assembly polls in Khammam

Over 10,000 officials and staff will be engaged in election duties in five Assembly constituencies in the district.

Khammam: With the gazette notification for the Telangana Assembly elections set to be issued on November 3, the district administration is engaged in making foolproof arrangements to conduct the polls.

Over 10,000 officials and staff will be engaged in election duties in five Assembly constituencies in the district. This time 200 new polling stations are additionally set up to ensure voters need not travel far distances to cast their vote. Rs.50 lakh is being spent to improve facilities like ramps, toilets and drinking water at polling stations where such facilities lacked.

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Speaking to Telangana Today, District Election Officer and Collector VP Gautham informed that EVM strong rooms at distribution centres in five constituencies were secured with a two layer security after the first randomisation of EVMs was complete. CPRF personnel and the local Armed Reserve police were deployed at distribution centres.

Randomisation of 6,900 polling personnel was complete, assigning polling officer (PO), assistant polling officer (APO) and other polling officer (OPO) duties. A three-day training for them would begin on October 30 in five constituencies. Election duties would be assigned later through a second round of randomisation.

Surveillance has been increased since the announcement of the election schedule. Sixteen inter-State check posts equipped with CCTV cameras were connected online to a full-fledged control room at IDOC for real-time and round the clock monitoring. The vehicles of 16 flying squads were fitted with GPS trackers. The cVIGIL app was also integrated with the control room.

Recently surveillance teams seized 9,450 wall clocks worth Rs 40 lakh at a political leader’s house in Khammam. Care has been taken to release the seized unauthorised cash which is above Rs 50,000 at the earliest, within 48 hours, if proper evidence is shown for the amount, Gautham said.

Bulk online transfer of money, one-to-many UPI transactions were also under scanner. A suspicious transactions report was being processed by the IT cell at the national level and a report was sought to check such transactions. The district administration was committed to conduct polls sans money power, he said.

A massive campaign on cVIGIL app was taken up to educate people and political parties’ representatives to report election code violations. Nearly 1,000 flex banners about the app were displayed at all gram panchayats and municipal wards in the district. Booth level advisory groups were formed and made to download cVIGIL, he said.

In a new initiative, data of newly married women availed Kalyana Lakshmi/Shadi Mubarak in the past five years in the district was processed to ensure that the women shifted to other places after marriage enrolled as voters in each Assembly constituency. In all 21, 858 women were given voting rights locally through form-6 or form-8, Gautham informed.

A selfie-point for voter awareness at Lakaram in Khammam was being planned, besides preparing campaign material such as badges and vehicle stickers with a message ‘I will vote’ to motivate the public to cast their votes.