Hyderabad, Nov 23 (IANS): Home voting is underway for three categories of voters in Telangana for Assembly elections, Chief Electoral Officer Vikas Raj said on Thursday.

For the first time, the Election Commission of India introduced home voting and it started two days ago.

The facility has been made available in three categories: 80 plus senior citizens, Persons with Disabilities (PwD) and essential services.

A total of 9,386 voters of over 80 years of age and 5,022 PwD voters cast their votes till November 22.

A total of 253 voters in the essential services category also cast their votes.

Postal ballot facility is available for police and other personnel who are on polling duty.

A facilitation centre has been opened in every constituency.

Raj said till Wednesday, 32,730 availed this facility and for service voters, the poll authorities have sent electronically-transmitted ballots.

The voters will download them and send them as postal ballots to returning officers concerned.

Till November 22, a total of 9,830 service voters downloaded the ballots and 275 made bookings to send postal ballots.

The CEO said they are geared up for the polling to be held in all 119 Assembly constituencies on November 30.

The state has 3.26 crore voters with female voters exceeding males. There are 9.99 lakh voters in the age group of 18-19. This accounts for 3.06 per cent of the total number of voters, which is the highest ever.

There are more than four lakh voters aged above 80 years and more than five lakh PwD voters. The state has a total of 35,655 polling stations including 299 auxiliary polling stations. A total of 59,779 ballot units will be used.

The poll authorities printed 4,70,287 postal ballots and 8,84,507 lakh EVM ballots.

The CEO said they printed more EVM ballots for use in case of tendered and challenged ballots.

Vikas Raj said that traditionally Telangana has not had a lot of law and order problems but they will keep a close vigil for any deployment needed.

About 65,000 state police personnel will be deployed across the state to maintain peace. In addition to this, 375 companies of central forces will be deployed.

“Many of them are here, some of them are on the way,” he said.

The CEO said this year they have printed more than 51 lakh new EPICs and their distribution is almost completed. Three special observers have come to the state for general, police and expenditure purposes.

The election authorities have almost completed distribution of 2.81 crore voter information slips across the state.