Polling was held across Andhra Pradesh on Sunday for elections to 92 urban local bodies, a vast civic exercise in which nearly one crore voters were eligible to choose mayors, municipal chairpersons and ward members. Voting began at 7 am amid tight security and was scheduled to continue till 5 pm, with the counting of votes set for November 3.
The elections, originally scheduled for October 28, were deferred after directions from the Supreme Court following violent incidents during the nomination stage, and they are being watched as the first major electoral test for the state's ruling and opposition alliances since the 2024 Assembly elections.
The State Election Commission said polling was held in 13 municipal corporations and 79 municipalities and nagar panchayats. Elections had been notified for 100 urban local bodies in all, but in eight of them — Piduguralla, Gurazala, Dachepalli, Darsi, Allagadda, Proddatur, Rayachoti and Kamalapuram — the chairpersons and ward members were elected unanimously, so no polling was needed there.
The ruling National Democratic Alliance secured all the posts in these eight bodies without a contest.
In the 92 bodies where voting took place, as many as 99.36 lakh voters were eligible to decide the fate of 10,262 candidates contesting mayoral, chairperson and ward-level posts. The scale of the exercise is enormous: 11,378 polling stations were set up across the state, and more than 36,000 police personnel were deployed at 4,372 polling locations to ensure peaceful voting.
The Election Commission classified 142 polling stations as critical, 7,070 as sensitive and 4,262 as hypersensitive, and made elaborate arrangements including CCTV cameras and drones at places where clashes were anticipated.
State Election Commissioner Anil Chandra Punetha and his team of officers personally monitored the conduct of the elections. Punetha inspected the polling process at a polling station in the VTPS Colony within the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation limits, and officials said a close watch was being kept on violations of the Model Code of Conduct. Repolling, if needed anywhere, will be conducted on November 2.
The main contest is between the ruling National Democratic Alliance, comprising the Telugu Desam Party, the Jana Sena Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the opposition YSR Congress Party led by former Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy.
The alliance, led by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, is defending its record in urban governance, while the YSRCP is seeking to demonstrate that it retains support in the towns and cities after its defeat in the 2024 Assembly elections. The results on November 3 will therefore be read as a political signal well beyond the municipal wards themselves.
The mayoral contests drew particular attention. As many as 153 candidates contested the mayor posts in the 13 municipal corporations — Vizianagaram, Greater Visakhapatnam, Guntur, Ongole, Nellore, Anantapur, Kurnool, Kadapa, Chittoor, Vijayawada, Eluru, Machilipatnam and Tirupati. Of the 922 wards in these corporations, polling was held in 804, as corporators had already been elected unanimously in the remaining 118 wards.
A total of 3,073 candidates contested the corporator posts. In the municipalities and nagar panchayats, 367 candidates contested chairperson posts in 70 bodies, while 17 chairpersons had already been elected unanimously. Across all the civic bodies, candidates had been elected unopposed in 756 of the 3,942 wards.
Voter turnout built steadily through the day. By 1 pm, the overall turnout was 37.13 per cent, with around 36 lakh voters having exercised their franchise, according to the State Election Commission. Kanigiri in Markapuram district recorded the highest turnout of 63.36 per cent, though polling was being held in only two wards there.
In Pulivendula, where clashes had been reported ahead of polling, 51.51 per cent of voters had cast their ballots by 1 pm. Among the 13 municipal corporations, Machilipatnam recorded the highest turnout of 47.85 per cent, followed by Vijayawada with 36.40 per cent and Guntur with 30.94 per cent. Visakhapatnam recorded the lowest turnout among the urban bodies at 27.55 per cent by early afternoon.
The elections were not without controversy. YSR Congress Party MP from Kadapa, Y S Avinash Reddy, alleged violence and polling irregularities at several booths during the day, accusing Telugu Desam Party agents of casting votes on behalf of ordinary voters. He alleged that agents were taking away voters' slips, sending the voters outside and casting their votes.
The allegations, made while polling was under way, underline the charged atmosphere in parts of the state, particularly in Kadapa district, which was among the areas where the nomination process had been disrupted.
That disruption is the reason these elections are being held on November 1 rather than October 28. The YSR Congress Party had approached the Supreme Court over the nomination stage, alleging that violent incidents had prevented several of its candidates from filing their papers.
Acting on the court's directions, the State Election Commissioner ordered that all further steps in all 100 civic bodies be stopped, and fresh nominations were accepted for 48 hours in four civic bodies where complaints of violence and disruption had come up during filing: Kadapa Municipal Corporation, Rajampet Municipality, Mydukur Municipality and Tirupati Municipal Corporation.
The commission then issued a revised timetable, moving polling in all 100 bodies to the same day and fixing counting for November 3. In the remaining civic bodies, nominations were not reopened, and the election proceeded on the revised schedule.
The heavy security deployment reflects the commission's determination to avoid a repeat of the nomination-stage violence. The commission's stated objective, in the words of Punetha, is to ensure that every voter exercises their franchise in a free and fair manner without fear, pressure or intimidation.
The deployment of drones and CCTV cameras at sensitive locations, the classification of thousands of polling stations by risk level, and the personal monitoring by the commissioner's team are all part of that effort.
There were some local glitches. In Vijayawada, polling at polling station 2 of the 55th ward in Rajarajeswari Peta began at 9 am rather than 7 am after a printing error in the allotment of party symbols to two candidates caused a delay. Such delays, while limited, are a reminder of the logistical complexity of an election involving nearly a crore of voters and thousands of candidates across a large state.
For the voters, the stakes are immediate and local: the corporators, ward members, chairpersons and mayors elected on Sunday will decide on drinking water, roads, sanitation, street lighting and property tax in their towns and cities for the next five years. Urban local bodies are the tier of government closest to daily life, and their performance is felt in every neighbourhood.
The large number of candidates — more than ten thousand — reflects how keenly these posts are contested, even when the headlines focus on the state-level political contest.
Counting will be taken up at 138 counting centres on Tuesday, November 3. Until then, the focus will remain on the turnout figures and on whether polling passed off peacefully across the state. If the final turnout is high and the process remains largely incident-free, the commission will be able to claim that the deferred elections, held under the Supreme Court's watch, were conducted fairly.
If complaints of irregularities multiply, particularly from the opposition, the results may be followed by disputes. Either way, the verdict of nearly a crore of urban voters will shape the political conversation in Andhra Pradesh in the weeks ahead, as both alliances look for momentum ahead of future electoral battles.
(Reporting based on The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle and The New Indian Express.)