Election Commission sensing political tension in the Seemandhra region that is going to polls on Wednesday has thrown an unprecedented security blanket over the 13 districts even as campaigning came to a close on Monday evening.
Over 1.2 lakh state police personnel, 272 companies of central paramilitary forces, and 20,000 personnel from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra have been moved to Seemandhra to ensure peaceful polls.
According to Inputs from the intelligence wing the YSR Congress and the TDP-BJP candidates are involved in straight contests in several constituencies.
“Compared to the 2009 elections, the total number of security personnel deployed in the Seemandhra region has been tripled. In the last elections, we had deployed about 100 companies of central forces in the region. But now we have positioned 272 companies apart from forces from Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka,” as said by Bhanwarlal, chief electoral officer of Andhra Pradesh.
Because of the high decibel contest between the YSRCP and TDP, there is visible tension in several places across the 175 Assembly constituencies. The EC is also inquiring into reports that candidates are leaving no stone unturned to woo the voter, including tempting them with money and liquor.
Due to the intense fight, the districts of Srikakulam, East and West Godavari, Krishna, Prakasam, Guntur, Nellore, Chittoor and Anantapur have already witnessed attacks and counter attacks between the YSR Congress and TDP cadre.
The situation has become tenser in the faction affected areas in Kurnool, Kadapa and Anantapur where police are finding it difficult to control the faction leaders.
With campaign for the 25 Lok Sabha and 175 Assembly constituencies in 13 Seemandhra districts coming to an end on Monday, the EC has made highly wrought arrangements to complete the second and final phase of elections in the state where 3.67 crore voters will exercise their franchise on Wednesday. As many as 1, 29,930 EVMs have by now has been moved to 40,700 polling stations and the polling staff directed to conduct mock polling by 6 am on Wednesday so that the faulty EVMs may be replaced by 7 pm.
The EC has provided 2,000 additional EVMs to every district in order to avoid delay in polling because of faulty EVMs.