Andhra Pradesh: Voting continues for second phase panchayat election, elections being held in four phases

Voting began on Saturday morning as part of the second phase to elect 2786 ward members of gram panchayat in Andhra Pradesh. The officials said that polling started at 6:30 AM and will continue till 3:30 PM while counting of votes will take place at 4 PM. Please tell that the Panchayat elections in the state started on February 9. It will be in four phases and the final phase will be held on February 21. In these elections, 20,817 ward members will be elected.An official release said on Friday that elections were to be held to elect 3,328 panchayat sarpanches but out of this 539 have been declared elected unopposed, while three villages have not filed nomination papers. According to the release, 7,507 candidates are contesting for the post of sarpanch, while 44 thousand 876 candidates are in the fray for the ward member.This election is being conducted through a ballot, in which the election symbol of any party will not be used. The release said that 29,304 polling stations have been set up, out of which 5480 have been identified as sensitive and 4181 as highly sensitive. According to the release, all necessary precautionary measures have been taken as per Covid-19 and tight security arrangements and PPE kits will be made available to the infected voters.