Dharwad ZP polls on Dec 19

The Dharwad district administration has made all preparations for the free and fair poll to zilla and taluk panchayats. Notification for elections to 22 seats in zilla panchayat and 75 seats in taluk panchayats was issued on Wednesday.

Giving details to the reporters here, Dharwad deputy commissioner and returning officer M S Srikar said that November 30 would be the last date for filing the nominations.

The scrutiny of papers will be on December 1 and the last date for withdrawal of nomination is December 3. Polling if necessary would be on December 19 from 7 am to 5 pm. The counting of votes will be held on December 27.

For zilla panchayat Dharwad taluk has six seats while Kalghatgi, Hubli, Navalgund and Kundgol taluks have four each.

Of the 22 seats one is reserved for ST woman, one for SC, one for SC woman, four for backward class 'A', two for Backward class 'A' woman, one for Backward class B woman, four seats for general women and eight for general category.

Of the 75 seats in five taluk panchayats Dharwad taluk has 21, Kundgol 15, Navalgund, Hubli and Kalghatagi 13 each. Women will have 37 seats (ST 5, SC 5, BC 'A'10, BC 'B'1, general 16) reserved for them.

Tahasildar's office in Dharwad, Modern School in Kalghatgi, Lamington High School in Hubli, Model School in Navalgund and Tahasildar?s office in Kundgol will be mustering centres. Counting will be at Basel Mission English Medium High School in Dharwad, Saint Xavier High school in Tumarikoppa of Kalghatagi, APMC printing press premises in Bhairidevarakopp of Hubli, Model school in Navalgund and Harbhat High School in Kundgol. The counting of votes will commence from 8 am.

There will be 584 polling booths in the district. Of them 207 are identified as sensitive and 134 as hyper sensitive. Each booth will have a presiding officer and four polling officers. There are 4.92 lakh voters in the district with women numbering 2.36 lakh. Dharwad taluk has the highest number of voters (134871) followed by Kundgol (97,573), Navalgund (93,844), Hubli (85,375) and Kalghatgi (80,346).

Srikar said adequate security arrangements would be made to ensure peaceful conduct of the elections. The officers of the rank of assistant commissioner would be returning officers at taluk level and the tahasildars of the respective talukas would be assistant returning officers.