The Voting for 3 Provincial Councils Commence at 7 AM today

To elect 108 provincial councilors in the three provincial Councils - Eastern, Subragamuwa and North Central Provinces will commence this morning by 7 AM. The final results are expected to be out by tomorrow 9 AM.

There are 3073 candidates in the fray in the three provincial Council to elect 108 Councilors.

The voting is based on the 2011 electoral register and 3,336,417 registered voters are eligible to vote.

The Department of Election has set up 3,247 polling stations in the 37 constituencies in the three provincial councils.

The voting commence today at 7 AM at Anuradapura, Polonaruwa, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Dhigamadulla, Ratnapuri and Kegalle districts.

More than 4000 local election monitors are expected to monitor today’s elections.

Furthermore more than 21,000 police personnel are involved in the election works.

According to Police sources, in each polling station there will be three armed police to provide security and for the three provincial council elections nearly 108 police stations will be involved in the security works.

Votes are expected to count in 236 counting centres. There will be 26 counting centres in Batticaloa. 29 in Dhiagamadulla, 19 in Trincomalee, and a total of 74 counting centres are established in the Eastern Province.

There are 42 counting centres in Anuradhapura, and 23 in Polonaruwa and there will be a total of 65 counting centres in the North Central Province.

In Kegalle district there are 42 counting centres and and in Ratnapura 55 and a total of 97 counting centres in the Subragamuwa Province.

In the Batticaloa district there are 414 polling centres and 347, 099 eligible voters to elect 11 councilors. In Trincomalee there are 285 polling stations and 245363 eligible voters to elect 10 Councilors. In Dhigamadulla there are 463 polling stations and 441, 287 eligible voters to elect 14 Councilors.

In Ratnapura there are 623 polling centres and 769814 eligible voters to elect 24 Councilors. In Kegalle there are 566 polling stations and 631981 eligible voters to elect 18 Councilors.

In Anuradhapura there are 508 polling centres and there are 6 06 508 voters to elect 21 Councilors. In Polonaruwa there are 287 polling centres and 294,365 votes to elect 10 Councilors.

On 27 and 28 postal voting tokk place for the three provincial council elections.

The three Provincial Councils were dissolved on 27 June and nominations were filed from 12 - 19 July and deposits were made from 12 -18 July.

Nearly 91 Political Parties are contesting in the 7 districts. Two political parties were rejected after the verifications of nominations. Also 88 independent groups filed nominations and 2 independent groups were rejected.

- Asian Tribune -