A few days prior to the civic body polls being held in Kerala, the Kerala State Election Commission has sorted out 1,850 polling booths as 'sensitive' and decided to introduce a webcasting facility to keep a watch on the poll proceedings there. The booths, located in all the 14 districts of the southern state, were identified as sensitive based on the report of police chief Loknath Behera and State Election Commissioner V Bhaskaran gave directions for webcasting, an SEC statement said here.

The politically volatile Kannur has the highest number of sensitive booths-785 while Pathanamthitta has the lowest- 5. While Thiruvananthapuram district has 180 sensitive booths, Malappuram has100, Kozhikode (120), Palakkad (182), Kasaragod (100), Wayanad (152), and so on.

NOtably, the northern districts have the highest number of sensitive booths. Meanwhile, the poll proceedings would be video graphed in the sensitive booths, identified jointly by the district election officers, district police chiefs, and city police commissioners, the SEC said.

A total of 74,899 candidates including 36,305 women and one transgender are trying their luck in the upcoming local body polls, which is considered the curtain-raiser for the Assembly polls due next year. Malappuram district has 8,387 candidates, the highest in the state, while Wayanad has the lowest at 1,857.

An electorate of over 2.76 crores would exercise their voting to elect representatives to 941-gram panchayats, 152 block panchayats, 14 district panchayats, 86 municipalities, and six municipal corporations. The votes would be counted on December 16.

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