Ready to hold poll any time, assures Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar

Hyderabad: Chief Electoral Officer Rajat Kumar said they were ready to conduct the Assembly elections at any time but the Election Commission was yet to take a decision on the schedule. During a media interaction, the CEO said that an adequate number of EVMs had been kept ready and all arrangements to conduct elections made. Mr Rajat Kumar said BHEL was ready to supply EVMs for an additional 100 polling stations, if the situation demanded.

He said 19.5 lakh people had submitted their applications, of whom 1.5 lakh were rejected for not meeting the norms. Of the applications for enrolment, nearly 60 per cent were new. He stated that the EC was working in a transparent manner in the revision of electoral lists and they were thoroughly verifying the voter lists constituency-wise.

He said on an average there was an increase of 13 per cent voters in every constituency while 40 per cent drop was witnessed in Bhadrachalam and 21 per cent in Aswaraopeta constituencies. This apart, there were 4.16 lakh differently-abled voters in state, for whom, special arrangements are being made at polling stations to enable them to exercise their franchise without any trouble, he added. Efforts are being made to provide them transportation and ensure there were no queues for them.

New voters to be included in the supplementary list

The GHMC will accept online enrolments for voters from October 10. Election wing officials said that the CEO’s website was not accepting online applications from September 25. According to election wing officials, new enrolments for the electoral list after September 25 would be included in the supplementary voters list where citizens could enrol their names even after the election notification.