VIJAYAWADA: Casting vote in the election to the graduates' constituency or teachers' constituency, as the case may be, of the proposed legislative council will take a longer time than what it takes in a general election.

In the case of election to the Lok Sabha or Assembly, all one needs to do is just give his or her stamp of approval against the name of the candidate of his or her choice on the paper ballot or on the electronic voting machine. In this method, which is known as `first-past-the-post', the candidate who secures the highest number of votes is declared elected.

But in the case of elections to the legislative council, `preferential voting' method would be followed along with `single transferable vote' method. This means that if four candidates remain in fray, a voter will have to mark 1 against the name of the candidate of his or her first choice, followed by 2, 3 and 4. When votes are counted, the candidate who secures the highest first preference votes will be declared elected. As the marking of the choices against the names of various candidates will take about two to three minutes for each voter, the election authorities have decided to organise polling stations for about 750 voters each.

Sub-Collector Ch. Bhanu Prasad said on Tuesday that preliminary proposals relating to polling stations in Vijayawada revenue division had already been sent to the office of chief electoral officer in Hyderabad soon after the publication of draft electoral roll of graduates and teachers.

"But after the number of voters has gone up with the publication of the final list on January 12, we sent fresh proposals keeping in view the increased number of voters. We hope to receive clearance for the polling stations by month-end," he said.

Final list

According to the final list of Krishna district, 92,454 graduates and 6,183 teachers enrolled their names for the constituencies of graduates and teachers, respectively. A major chunk of the 92,454 graduates, i.e. about 51,000, are in Vijayawada revenue division alone. Of this, about 35,000 to 40,000 are in the Vijayawada city limits.

Mr. Prasad said that keeping in view the presence of a high number of voters in the city, about 10 major areas, such as Patamata, Satyanarayanapuram, Ajit Singh Nagar, Labbipeta and so on, had been identified for locating the polling stations. "Patamata area alone has a concentration of about 7,800 graduate voters, which means we will have to organise polling stations accordingly," he explained.

Mr. Prasad pointed out that the voter list would be re-organised on the basis of residential addresses of voters once the polling stations were finalised.

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