12 candidates in Udupi-Chikmagalur constituency: DC

Udupi: With the withdrawal of their nomination by two independent candidates, there are presently 12 candidates finalized to contest for the Udupi-Chikmagalur Lok Sabha elections.

Nomination was withdrawn by independent candidates Ganapthy Shettigar and Sudheer Kanchan on March 29^th, which was the last day for nomination withdrawal. The remaining 12 candidates are in the process of filling up 7A Form, informed Udupi DC Hephshiba Rani Korlapati.

The contesting candidates include Shobha Karandlaje (BJP), Pramod Madhwaraj (JD(S), M K Dayanand (Proutist Sarva Samaj Party), M K Ganesh (Independent), Gautam Prabhu (Shiv Sena), Shekar Havanje (Republican Party of India), Suresh Kunder (Uttama Prajakeeya Party), Vijay Kumar (CPI, Marxist and Leninist, Red Star), P Parameshwar (BSP), Amrit Shenoy (Independent), K C Prakash (Independent) and Abdul Rehman (Independent).

Number of voters

Speaking about the number of voters the DC said, there are 14,98,016 voters in the Lok Sabha constituency, of which 7,65,823 are women  voters. Among the total voters, 30,826 are youth while 11,861 differently-abled. Nearly 99.9 % of voter’s identity cards had been distributed.

The DC said that since there are more women voters in Udupi district, plans have been drawn to introduce more than 26 ‘Sakhi’ polling booths, which are an all women managed polling booths.

Three polling booths will be managed by persons with disability while three ethnic polling booths have been planned to be set up in tribal areas.

Polling booths

There will 1,837 polling stations in the constituency of which 1,111 are in Udupi district and the remaining in Chikkamagalur district. There will be 1,401 presiding officers, 1,405 first booth officers, 2,810 second and third booth officers in Udupi district. As many as 5,616 staffs have been deployed at the polling booths across Udupi, informed the DC.

The DC said that seven cases have been registered for violation of model code of conduct and Rs 16,65,810 had been seized in Udupi. However, following the submission of valid documents, Rs 3,25,960 have been returned. Of the total 4,630 licensed weapons in the district, 3,693 weapons have been surrendered to the police stations, informed the DC.

As many as 42 cases have been registered through cVigil App of which 32 were found genuine, she added.

Following the implementation of code of conduct, the Excise Department has seized around 18,000 liters of alcohol while 2,520 liters of alcohol has been seized by the police department.