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Hyderabad, Nov 10 (IANS) A total of 139 drones will be deployed in Hyderabad as part of arrangements to ensure smooth, free and fair voting for the by-election to be held on Tuesday for the Jubilee Hills assembly constituency.
For the first time, officials are deploying drones to cover all the polling stations in a constituency.
Telangana Chief Electoral Officer C. Sudarshan Reddy said, for the first time, drone surveillance is being deployed at all polling locations for centralized aerial surveillance and real-time situation analysis.
The drones will help in closely monitoring the election process at 407 polling stations located in 139 buildings. Real-time monitoring will provide a bird’s eye view of polling stations and help election officials identify any irregularities immediately.
A control room has been set up at the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) head office to monitor the use of drones.
The drones were handed over to the concerned officials at the distribution, reception and counting centre, where the EVMs and other polling material were given to the polling officials. A demo show of the drone also took place in the presence of District Election Officer RV Karnan.
Voting will take place from 7 am to 6 pm. Voters standing in queues at polling stations will be allowed to cast their votes at 6 pm.
A little more than 4 lakh voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in the by-election, which has been necessitated by the death of sitting Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA Maganti Gopinath.
A total of 58 candidates are in the fray, but the main contest is between the ruling Congress party and the opposition BRS and BJP.
BRS has fielded Gopinath’s wife Sunita, while Naveen Yadav has fielded on Congress ticket. BJP has once again fielded Lankala Deepak Reddy.
Hyderabad District Election Officer Karnan said live webcasting would be done from all polling stations to ensure peaceful voting and maintain law and order.
Of the 407 polling stations at 65 locations, 226 have been identified as critical polling stations where paramilitary forces will be deployed.
Karnan said 2,060 polling personnel would be on duty. These include 515 polling officers and equal number of assistant polling officers.
Keeping in view the large number of candidates contesting the elections, Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) consisting of one Control Unit (CU), four Ballot Units (BU) and one VVPAT will be provided at all polling stations. A total of 561 CUs, 2,394 BUs and 595 VVPATs will be deployed.
Forty engineers/technicians from Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) will be deployed to deal with any contingency.
The transportation of EVMs through GPS fitted vehicles will be continuously monitored from the control room. As per ECI guidelines, any faulty voting equipment will be replaced with functional reserve equipment on the polling day.
There are a total of 4,01,365 voters in the constituency, which includes 2,08,561 males, 1,92,779 females and 25 others.
According to the DEO, there are 6,859 voters in the 18-19 years age group, while there are 2,134 voters above 85 years of age.
He said that 103 absentee voters (above 85 years and PWD voters) have exercised their option for postal ballot, and 101 of them have exercised postal ballot voting.
Mobile deposit counters are being opened at all polling stations to facilitate voters to deposit their mobile phones before entering the polling stations and withdraw them after casting their vote.
Three-tier security system has been put in place. Hyderabad Police Commissioner is deploying mobile squads to monitor strike forces and law and order to make adequate security arrangements at all polling stations to ensure peaceful conduct of polling.
According to CEO Sudarshan Reddy, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has been deployed at 68 polling station locations.
Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police Tafseer Iqbal said 1,761 police personnel have been deployed.
–IANS
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