Hyderabad: Compared to other Lok Sabha constituencies in Telangana, polling in Nizamabad is expected to be a time-consuming affair and the period during which booths remain open for voting is likely to be extended.

With 185 candidates in the fray, 179 of them independent farmers, the Election Commission is using as many as 12 ballot units in each polling booth in the constituency to accommodate the names and symbols of all the candidates.

Voters will have to press a button to select the name and symbol of the candidate of their choice and their vote will be recorded.

To facilitate the voters in identifying the candidate of their choice, lists of candidates along with their symbols will be displayed outside every polling booth of Nizamabad, state chief electoral officer Rajath Kumar said.

In view of the large number of EVMs, the Election Commission was making special arrangements in the constituency and 400 engineers were being deployed to deal with potential technical snags.

Joint rally

One helicopter was also being specifically deployed for Nizamabad constituency and a helipad will be made available in each of the seven assembly segments of the constituency, he said.

Meanwhile all the 179 farmer-candidates will organise a joint election rally on Tuesday, the last day of campaign in Nizamabad.

“Polling will be held from 8am to 6pm. But in view of the large number of candidates, a mock exercise will be held from 6am to 8am”, Rajath Kumar told the media.

The doubts expressed by farmers over the polling arrangements have been cleared and they were now satisfied, he added. Earlier the farmers had demanded that the polls should be postponed to a later date as they were not given enough time to campaign with their symbols.

While the turmeric farmers were in the fray to highlight their pending demands the main fight was between K. Kavitha of TRS, Madhu Yashki of Congress and D. Arvind of the BJP.