The EC said the decision was taken after incidents of violence, malfunctioning of EVMs or other circumstances prevented voters from exercising their franchise on polling day.
The Election Commission on Wednesday decided to conduct re-polling in five polling booths in Andhra Pradesh on May 6. The re-polling will be held in booths located in Guntur, Prakasam and Nellore districts. State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Gopal Krishna Dwivedi had earlier sent proposals to the Election Commission in New Delhi seeking repoll in five polling stations.
This followed the recommendation by the collectors of three districts for repoll as on the polling day, incidents of violence, malfunctioning of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) or other circumstances prevented voters from exercising their franchise freely.
In a letter to the CEO, Principal Secretary S K Rudola said that the ECI had taken the decision after “having considered the reports submitted by the returning officers read with reports of the observers and after taking all facts and material circumstances into account.”
The ECI said that re-polling would take place for both the Assembly and Parliament elections at one polling station under Narsaraopet Assembly and Parliamentary constituency, one under the Guntur Parliament seat and Guntur West Assembly constituency and another under the Yerragondapalem Assembly and Ongole Lok Sabha seat.
In Kovvur Assembly segment under the Nellore Parliament seat and Sullurpeta Assembly seat under Tirupati Parliamentary constituency, voting would take place only for Lok Sabha, EC officials said.
Elections for all the 175 Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies across Andhra Pradesh were held in a single phase on April 11.
A total of 319 candidates were in the fray for the 25 Lok Sabha seats and 2,118 for the 175-member Assembly. The ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP), opposition YSRCP and actor-politician Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party-led alliance were in the fray.
The highest voter turnout was recorded in the Narasaraopet Lok Sabha constituency, which saw 85.53 percent voting. The Visakhapatnam constituency registered lowest turnout of 67.25 percent.
This was the first general election held in Andhra Pradesh after bifurcation of the state in June 2014, which led to the creation of Telangana.
The previous elections held in undivided Andhra Pradesh had witnessed 74.64 percent polling.
IANS inputs
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