Amaravati, Mar 10 (IANS): Andhra Pradesh is all set to go to the urban local bodies polls on Wednesday as the final arrangements are already being put in place.
As many as 87 urban local bodies and 12 municipal corporations will go to the polls in the 13 districts of the southern state.
Vijayawada Municipal Commissioner Prasanna Venkatesh said there are 64 wards within Vijayawada municipal corporation in which 788 polling stations have been set up.
"As many as 7.83 lakh people have been registered as voters. For 83 per cent of these people, voter slips have been distributed. As many as 5,000 polling staff have collected their appointment letters today," said Venkatesh.
He said statutory and non-statutory material, which include ballot papers, ballot boxes, seals and others are being collected by the staff.
After verifying the material, the Commissioner said the polling staff will leave for their respective stations in APSRTC buses by Tuesday evening.
"Early in the morning, the polling stations will be set up. Starting 7 a.m. voting will begin and will last till 5 p.m. Some places have been categorized as hyper sensitive and sensitive places. Wherever such polling stations are located, live webcasting has been arranged," said Venkatesh.
He said the sensitive places will also have videography.
Likewise, for independently managing the sensitive locations, Central government employees have been deployed as micro-observers.
"Other than these, we are also arranging multi-level security with the police. 100 metres from the polling station, except the voter, candidate and the election agent, nobody else will be allowed to enter," highlighted Venkatesh.
Besides similar arrangements in Kurnool urban local body, the municipal corporation has launched kmcelections.com website to enable the voters to easily find their polling stations.
According to Kurnool Municipal Commissioner, voters can easily fill in their name or their voter id number to find their respective polling station, along with the google maps location and geo coordinates.
Several hoardings have been erected in Kurnool town to popularize the website, which already received 3.5 lakh views.
"Unlike the low polling percentage in the last elections, there will be higher polling this time," he said.
Similarly in Vizianagaram on Tuesday, the urban local body arranged lunch and refreshments for the polling personnel who arrived to pick up the election paraphernalia.
All of them will be shifted to the polling stations in 29 APSRTC buses and 41 smaller vehicles.