Hyderabad, Nov 11 (UNI) Voting for the Jubilee Hills Assembly by-election began on Tuesday morning under tight security arrangements.
Polling started at 0700 hours and will continue until 1800 hours. Voters turned up early at several booths, forming queues across the 407 polling stations set up at 139 locations in the constituency.
A total of 4,01,365 voters — including 2,08,561 men, 1,92,779 women and 25 voters registered under the ‘others’ category — are eligible to exercise their franchise.
The by-election was necessitated following the death of BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath in June this year. The key contenders in the fray are Maganti Sunitha of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), Lankala Deepak Reddy of the BJP and Naveen Yadav of the Congress, along with 55 other candidates.
Live webcasting is being carried out from all polling stations. For the conduct of polling, officials have arranged 561 control units, 595 VVPAT machines and 2,394 ballot units. Of the total polling stations, 226 have been identified as critical. As many as 2,060 polling personnel have been deployed on duty.
A three-tier security system has been put in place, with 1,761 local police personnel and eight companies of the CISF monitoring the constituency.
For the first time, drone surveillance is being used across polling locations for centralized aerial oversight and real-time monitoring.
Counting will be held on November 14.
