Udupi: District gears up for local body elections
Hemanath Padubidri / Silvester D'Souza
Daijiworld Media Network - Udupi (SM)
Udupi, Mar 6: All arrangements are in place in the district for the local body elections to be held on Thursday March 7.
There are 88 booths for 35 wards in Udupi city municipal, 23 booths for as many wards each in Kundapur and Karkala town municipals, and 14 booths for 14 wards in Saligrama town panchayat.
To ensure free and fair elections and to avoid any untoward incident, as many as 600 policemen have been deployed at the four election centres.
Udupi
Kundapur
Each highly sensitive area will be watched over by head constables, constables and home guard police. The sensitive areas will have constables and home guards on duty, while other booths will be watched over by police constables.
As many as 22 vehicles have been arranged for transport of officials on election duty. Sub-inspectors, assistant sub-inspectors and constables will be part of the police team at the booths.
In addition, checkposts have been set up at 10 places.
On Wednesday, mustering was held St Cecily School, Udupi, from where electronic voting machines (EVMs), which are in use for the first time for Udupi local body election, were sent to the respective wards.
Chief election officer Appaiah, DC Dr M T Reju, ADC Kumar, tahsildar Abhijit visted the spot.
The voting will begin from 7 am on Thursday and go on till 5 pm. The officials have requested people to come in large numbers and cast their votes.
In the four centres, altogether there are 1,22, 453 voters, among whom the female ratio is more. Udupi CMC has 38,406 women, 37,112 men; Kundapur TMC – 10,158 women, 9,324 men; Karkala TMC –8,603 women, 7,884 men; and Saligrama Town Panchayat – 5,823 women, 5,143 men.
The maximum expenditure budget for a candidate for CMC election was Rs 2 lac, and Rs 1.5 lac and Rs 1 lac for candidates contesting for TMC and town panchayat, respectively.
The counting will be held on March 11.
Congress, BJP confident of victory
Both Congress and BJP parties are confident of their victory, with Congress expecting to bag more than 30 out of the 35 seats (in Udupi CMC) and BJP expecting a higher majority than the previous poll.
Congress claims that its candidates are well-educated and youngsters and women being included without any discrimination, while the BJP claims that its candidates are shadows of Dr V S Acharya.
BJP district president Uday Kumar Shetty said, "Congress has only 16 candidates out of 25 in Kundapur (TMC) whereas BJP has candidates in all councils."
"The Udupi CMC has been known to be the best in the state for its outstanding service to public on various development projects. The entire team received an award at a time when the CMC was celebrating its platinum jubilee," he added.
"The public has already witnessed the developments of BJP, which is now working towards the Rs 66 crore Kundapur drainage system project.
"Congress is showing money power, on the other hand we will show the strength of the party workers," he stressed.
Youth Congress leader Amrith Shenoy speaking to Daijiworld said, "BJP is trying to manipulate the public by boasting about their development workds like spending crores on lifeless buildings such as the DC office, town hall, roads etc. There is no need for such progress when basic requirements like water have not been provided.
"From the past few years we are witnessing deficiency of water, which hit the highest point when BJP was in power. They did not address the problem. As many as 1,200 applications have been received for house sites and not a single one has been sanctioned and they have no answer with regard to this," he said.
"In the previous election manifesto BJP promised to provide water from the Swarna during the second phase but no progress has been seen because of mismanagement," he alleged.
"They have also forgotten the promise of providing drainage facilities throughout the city and they have carried forward the same this year also. When Yeddyurappa was the CM, he promised to provide Rs 25 crore to CMC, and the plan was chalked out accordingly, but CMC has recieved only Rs 10 crore and thereby lots of work is pending. Waste management system was also a failure," he added.
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