Udupi: “Elaborate arrangements have been made to conduct free and fair Zilla and Taluk Panchayat elections in district,” said S Yogeshwar Deputy Director of Food and Civil Supplies and also the Election Officer for the Zilla panchayat elections. He was addressing the press meet at Election office Udupi here on Saturday January 30.
He said that, the elections in Udupi district will be held under the second phase. “The elections will be held on February 20 between 7 am and 5 pm,” he added.
He said that, the election would be held for 26 ZP and 98 TP constituencies. The district administration has made necessary preparations for the smooth conduct of the election.
The filing of nominations for the upcoming Panchayat elections will be held between February 1 and 8, from 11 am to 3 pm. February 8 is the last date to submit nominations, which will be scrutinized on February 9. February 11 is the last date to withdraw nominations. The limitation for election expenses of the candidates will be Rs 1 lakh for Zilla Panchyat constituencies and Rs 50,000 for Taluk Panchyat.
Yogeshwar further said that there would be 390 polling booths in Udupi Taluk. From the 390 voting booths, 30 booths have been identified as hyper-sensitive, 66 as sensitive and 296 as normal. There are 788173 voters in (Kundpaur -305579, Udupi- 329614, Karkala – 152980) the district. Out of which 377128 are male (Kundpaur -147028, Udupi- 157278, Karkala – 72822), 411024 are female (Kundpaur -158535, Udupi- 172331, Karkala – 80158) and 21 transgender (Kundpaur -10, Udupi- 5, Karkala – 0).
“Nagesh Shanubhag, Block Education officer Brahmavar will be the assistant election officer for the Zilla Panchayat elections. T G Guruprasad Thasildar Udupi, Thippeswami Special Tahsildar Brahmavar, Dr Bhaskar Shetty Assistant Professor G Sheneker from Women’s First Grade College will be the election officers for the Taluk Panchayat elections,” said Yogishewar.
“To conduct free and fair election in district 22 Sector officers, 4 model code of conduct team, 4 surveillance teams, 2 TV and print media verification Teams, 3 election expenditure watch team has been formed in the district. The district administration has made all types of security arrangement for the election. Electronic voting machines would be used for the election and the officials assigned with polling duty have already been trained in their usage. A team of officials have been formed for enforcement of model code of conduct. A control room had been set up at the Zilla Panchayat to monitor the model code enforcement and receive complaints on its violation, he added.
Nagesh Shanubhag, Block Education Officer Brahmavar, Thippeswami Special Tahsildar Brahmavar, Dr Bhaskar Shetty Assistant Professor G Sheneker from Women’s First Grade College were present in the press meet.
