The seizure of cash, liquor, drugs, precious metals, freebies and other inducements in the run-up to the elections in Andhra Pradesh has been pegged at Rs 141 crore from the announcement of the poll schedule announcement till date.
Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh will be held simultaneously with Lok Sabha polls on May 13. The poll schedule was announced by the Election Commission on March 16.
According to a press release from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Tuesday, the value has already doubled the total value of such seizures in the run-up to the 2019 elections.
"From the time of the announcement of the election schedule till Tuesday (April 23), Rs 141 crore worth cash, liquor, drugs, precious metals, freebies and other inducements have been seized, which amounted to the highest-ever statewide seizures and twice the value of total seizures logged during 2019 polls," said the release.
The Election Commission noted that such a high seizure of inducements registered even before the conduct of elections is a record in the southern state.
It said as many as 424 inter-state and intra-state checkposts were set up and a Command Control Centre was scrutinising vehicles passing through 358 of these checkposts via webcasting.
Besides satellite-tracking movement of liquor across the state, the Election Commission is also monitoring movement of 1,680 vehicles used by flying squads and sectoral officers operating on poll duties with the same mechanism, along with vehicles ferrying the Electronic Voting Machines.
Also, the EC has been focussing on news being telecast on Telugu news channels, including taking relevant action on adverse reports related to polls. Similar steps have been incorporated to track news in the print media.
