Poll preparations in full swing in A.P. as schedule is likely to be out in March

Arrangements for upcoming elections in Andhra Pradesh are underway, with EVMs ready and surveillance teams deployed to enforce the Model Code of Conduct.

Arrangements for the general elections to the 25 Lok Sabha (LS) and 175 Assembly constituencies in Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) are going on in full swing as the Election Commission of India (ECI) is likely to announce the schedule next month. 

The most important requirement of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) has already been met. A total of 92,000 EVMs (two each for 46,000 polling stations - one for LS and the other for Assembly polls) have already been sourced from Bharat Electronics Limited and another 20% kept as buffer stock. The aggregate number of EVMs readied (all of them new machines) is thus 1,10,400. 

The mechanical and data checking of the EVMs, each one of which will have a controlling and a balloting unit and a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT device), has been completed, A.P. Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Mukesh Kumar Meena told The Hindu. 

He said tenders were floated for the procurement of other election material and they were going to be finalised in about 10 days. 

As far as the election management is concerned, the training for all District Collectors was completed in January and the whole training programme is poised to be over by the end of February. 

The officers who are directly involved in election duty and completed three years at their places of posting in the districts have been transferred. In the Police Department, the officers from the sub-inspector rank who have completed the same period as above in the districts have also been shifted to other districts.

These transfers were affected in January.