Andhra Pradesh: Voting begins for 18 Assembly, 1 LS seat

Hyderabad: Voting begins for 18 Assembly, one LS seat with the stage set for polling in 18 Assembly constituencies and one Lok Sabha seat in Andhra Pradesh. The election authorities hav emade elaborate arrangements for the exercise.

As many as 46,13,589 voters would exercise their vote at 5,413 polling stations set up in the Nellore Lok Sabha constituency and 18 assembly segments, spread over 12 districts in the state.

State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Bhanwar Lal told reporters that 50,000 polling personnel including 138 companies of Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) have been deployed for the conduct of elections.

The polling will be held from 8 am to 5 pm.

Bypolls are necessitated in 16 of the 18 assembly seats as the sitting Congress MLAs were disqualified by Assembly Speaker for switching loyalty to Kadapa MP YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and voting against the Congress government during a no-trust vote in December.

The sitting MLA quit in support of Jagan in one constituency, while actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi resigned as MLA following his election to Rajya Sabha which caused bypoll in another seat.

The CEO said over Rs 42 crores in cash and valuable items like gold and silver worth Rs 12 crores have been seized till Monday which is higher than Rs 38 crore seized during the 2009 general elections.

In one instance, Rs 14 lakh in cash was seized from the office of a major political party recently, he said.

Replying to a query, Lal said directions have been issued to ask State Minister K Parthasarthy to leave the temple town of Tirupati as outsiders are not supposed to stay put in the poll-bound constituency ahead of the elections.

With Additional Inputs from PTI