Andhra Pradesh - Anantapur   

‘Irrational’ location of polling booths flayed

ANANTAPUR: All political parties, except the Congress, have strongly opposed the ‘irrational’ location of polling stations and last minute changes without informing them.They also have criticised the officials for striking off a sizeable number of voters from the final list of voters published by the ECI, copies of which are supplied to them, and inclusion of new ones without their knowledge.

Representatives of the Telugu Desam Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Bahujan Samaj Party and Lok Satta Party raised these issues with examples in a meeting with political parties on rationalisation of polling stations conducted by the district administration on the directions of the Election Commission of India here on Wednesday.

They cited examples of such irregularities committed by the officials even during the recent elections conducted for MPTC seats in Bukkaraya Samudram mandal. “We were shocked to find changes in the location of three polling stations during that election on the day of polling. We went to the locations which were given to us by the officials just two days prior to the polling and found no polling stations there,” Venkateswar Reddy, V. Ratnamaiah, Lalithkumar and others of the BJP pointed out.

Joint Collector T. Chiranjeevulu and District Revenue Officer M. Sudarshan Reddy told the parties to forget about the past and promised that last minute change of polling stations would not happen in future without informing them. However, they stated that inclusion and deletion of voters was a continuous process and it could take place even till withdrawal of nominations.

They said that additional polling stations were being proposed for voters numbering above 1,000 in the rural areas and 1,200 in the urban areas. The proposals were made in accordance to the delimitation of Assembly constituencies.

Prior to the delimitation, there were 2,761 polling stations in the district and another 318 were proposed now taking the total to 3,079. Besides, there was no disparity in the constituencies in terms of voters in the delimited constituencies with the difference being brought down to a maximum of about 44,000 voters.

As per the delimited constituencies, Kadiri would have the highest number of voters in the district (2,05,236) and Madakasira the lowest (1,66,763).

K.M. Saifullah and V. Hanumantharaya Chowdary of the TDP, M.V. Ramana and Y. Keshava Reddy of the CPI, G. Obulakonda Reddy of the CPI (M), Anand of the BSP and Parthasarathi of the Lok Satta also cited examples of deletion and inclusion of voters after final publication of rolls and suggested changes in the location of existing polling stations citing distance between the location and habitation. Sridhar represented Congress at the meeting.

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