MPTC, ZPTC polls under way in Andhra Pradesh: 2.61 crore rural voters, 8,349 seats, counting on 7 November

Voting in the MPTC, ZPTC polls opens at 7 am on Thursday, 5 November, across rural Andhra Pradesh, as 2,61,52,377 voters on the rolls fill 582 Zilla Parishad seats and 7,767 in the Mandal Parishads. Booths close at 5 pm, and the sealed boxes stay in strong rooms until counting on Saturday, 7 November.

The vote comes two days after the municipal count, and in districts still drying out after Cyclone Murasu. State Election Commissioner Anil Chandra Punetha went over the rain situation and poll readiness with district collectors and SPs in Vijayawada on Wednesday, 4 November. He said the rain had eased and most of the state faced no major obstacle. Officials are keeping a closer eye on West Godavari, Guntur and Bapatla.

Who is on the ballot

The state’s 28 Zilla Praja Parishads hold 659 ZPTC seats. Seventy-seven were settled unopposed, leaving 2,169 candidates for the remaining 582. On the mandal side, 2,051 of the 9,821 MPTC seats went unopposed, and 18,843 candidates contest the 7,767 still open. Three MPTC seats will see no polling at all: in Kondapuram mandal of YSR Kadapa district nobody filed papers for Sugumanchipalli-1 or Sugumanchipalli-2, and in Nandyal district every nomination for Krishnagiri in Banaganapalle mandal was rejected.

Palnadu tops the unopposed list with 382 MPTC seats, ahead of YSR Kadapa with 350 and Markapuram with 217. Among ZPTC seats, YSR Kadapa has 23 unopposed winners and Palnadu 18. Srikakulam has the most MPTC contests, 523, and SPSR Nellore the most ZPTC contests, 30. Women outnumber men on the rolls, 1,32,74,208 to 1,28,76,887, and 1,282 voters are listed as third gender.

Cameras, police and ballot boxes

Voting takes place in 31,460 polling stations; 8,904 are classed as sensitive and another 7,160 as hypersensitive. CCTV cameras cover 16,064 locations, 6,000 laptops will webcast from booths and 6,507 stations will be videographed. SEC Secretary A. Mallikarjuna said about 2.52 lakh staff would run the polling, with 40,679 police on duty. DGP Harish Kumar Gupta said sector officers would watch law and order and stop crowds from forming at booths. The commission has stocked 1,01,618 ballot boxes.

In Visakhapatnam district, voters will get a white ballot paper for the ZPTC seat and a pink one for the MPTC seat, the district administration said. Neighbouring Anakapalli votes in 1,530 booths to elect 24 ZPTC and 425 MPTC members, every one of them on webcast.

Counting on 7 November will use 9,062 tables in 365 centres, with about 52,000 staff. The commission had moved this poll from 3 November to 5 November so that it would not clash with the municipal count.