Vijayawada: Former Chief Secretary of AP Neelam Sahni assumed of State Election Commissioner of Andhra Pradesh on Thursday. After assuming office as SEC, she issued notification to the ZPTC & MPTC elections, which were stopped by the then SEC Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar in March 2020 due to the Covid- 19 pandemic.

In the regime of Nimmagadda as SEC, issued notification to the ZPTC & MPTCs in March, 2020 and also completed the nomination filing and scrutiny and process also. Now the remaining election process notification issued the present SEC Neelam Sahni on 1^st, April – 2021. As per this notification the ZPTC & MPTC election will be held on April 8^th and results will be declared on 10^th April.

Elections will held for 526 ZPTC & 7,321 MPTC seats:

Elections will be held on the 8th in 526 ZPTC and 7,321 MPTC seats, excluding the unanimous MPTC and ZPTC seats. The nomination withdrawal process ended a year ago. While there were 10,047 MPTC seats across the state, elections were postponed in some places due to a court case, while the then State Election Commission issued an election notification for only 9,692 MPTC seats.

Out of them, 2,371 were unanimous and the State Election Commission has now arranged for elections to be held in the remaining 7,321 places. Authorities said a total of 19,000 candidates were in the fray for the MPTC seats. The notification was then issued to hold elections in 652 places for 660 ZPTC seats across the state. Of these, 126 ZPTC seats are unanimous and the remaining 526 will go to polls. A total of 2092 candidates are vying for ZPTC seats.