Election officials who came to collect election materials at the Palakkad Municipal Office on Wednesday. | Photo credit: KK Mustafah
About 24 lakh voters are expected to turn up at polling booths across the district on Thursday to elect their representatives to the three-tier panchayats and municipalities. As many as 6,724 candidates are applying for Palakkad local bodies.
Voting will begin at 7:00 a.m. and continue until 6:00 p.m. Voters who arrive at the polling station before 6:00 p.m. will be able to cast their ballots, even if the process extends past the scheduled closing time.
The management of the city district declared a dry day for Thursday and Saturday.
As many as 3,054 polling stations have been arranged in the district, of which 2,749 are in panchayats and 305 are in municipalities. Officials reached the polling stations by Wednesday afternoon after collecting election materials, including voting machines, from their respective distribution counting centers. They will return the voting machines to the centers after Thursday’s vote.
There are 20 counting distribution centers in the district. The counting of votes will take place on Saturday.
A total of 284 polling stations have been classified as sensitive, spread across Palakkad, Chittoor-Tattamangalam and Cherpulassery municipalities, as well as 60 grama panchayats.
This designation is due to factors such as political clashes, communal tensions, the presence of unauthorized election agents and high voter density. A webcast will be held at 180 of these booths to ensure transparency and security.
The Electoral Commission deployed 4,366 control units and 12,393 voting units for the elections. In grama panchayats, each EVM will contain one control unit paired with three voting units, while in municipalities, one control unit will be used with one voting unit.
The district has 4,500 police officers on election duty. The security framework will be manned by a core team of 25 deputy superintendents, 40 inspectors and 300 sub-inspectors, backed by a 140-strong force of central paramilitary forces.
An additional official will be stationed at each of the 180 sensitive polling stations located on the site. Teams of four officers will be on duty in high alert areas, while around 500 additional personnel have been assigned to beef up security in Maoist-hit zones like Attappady.
In the 93 constituencies of the six grama panchayats bordering Tamil Nadu, the names of the candidates will also appear in Tamil on the ballot tags in the polling machines.
Published – 10 Dec 2025 21:16 IST
