The stage is set for over 79.94 lakh voters to cast their vote for election of mayors and councillors for 10 municipal corporations and chairpersons and ward members of 120 municipalities spread across the State.
With the High Court dismissing the petitions filed against the conduct of elections to urban local bodies, the Telangana State Election Commission issued notification for the ensuing polls on Tuesday. Accordingly, filing of nominations will commence from Wednesday and January 10 would be the last day of filing nominations.
The SEC would take up scrutiny of nominations on January 11 and appeals if any against the rejection of nominations would be disposed of the next day. The last day for withdrawal of nominations would be January 14 and the final list of contesting candidates would be announced the same day. Polling would be held on January 22 from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and counting of votes and declaration of results would be on January 25.
State Election Commissioner V. Nagi Reddy issued the notification after the commission had completed the process of reserving the ULBs going to polls to different categories. The division-wise and ward-wise reservations had also been announced by the government in the last couple of days. The SEC planned to set up a little over 8,000 polling booths in the ULBs, allocating around 800 voters to each polling station.
Election expenditure observers would be deployed to these ULBs with immediate effect and the SEC had set limit of ₹1 lakh for contestants of municipalities and ₹ 1.5 lakh for those in the fray from the corporations.
