Voting for 120 municipal councils, nine municipal corporations in Telangana on Wednesday

Voting for 120 municipal councils and nine municipal corporations in Telangana will be held on Wednesday. 

The campaigning for the Telangana local body polls ended on Monday. The ruling TRS, the BJP and the Congress are vying to win the most number of local bodies in the polls. 

While polling for 120 municipalities and nine municipal corporations will be held on January 22, the voting for Karimnagar municipal corporation will take place separately on January 25 following a High Court order. 

Counting of voters for Karimnagar will be conducted on 27 while results for other local bodies will out on January 25. In Karimnagar, a total of 525 candidates have filed nominations.

There are a total of 12,898 candidates in the fray for 3052 wards of 120 nagar palikas and nine nagar nigams. While 120 municipal councils together have 2727 wards, nine municipal corporations have 325 wards. 

The TRS has fielded 2972 candidates, the number of Congress nominees is 2616 and the BJP has 2313 candidates. Among smaller parties, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), CPI, CPI(M) and TDP have fielded 276, 177, 166 and 347 candidates, respectively. 

There are also 3750 independent candidates in the fray. 

Out of these 3052 wards, results of 72 wards have been decided uncontested. While 69 of these seats have gone to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and three to the AIMIM. 

The state election commission has set up 6325 polling booths for 120 municipalities while it has 1438 polling booths for 325 wards of municipal corporations.

For security during the polling, the state polling body has roped in 44,000 cops with at least two policemen for each polling booth.