Koraput: Hundreds of villagers from the disputed Kotia panchayat under Pottangi block of Koraput district defied security restrictions to trek for miles and cast their votes in Andhra Pradesh’s rural local body elections on Thursday.Polling for Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTC) and Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTC) in the Kotia region of Salur mandal in Parvathipuram Manyam district witnessed heightened tension, with officials and police personnel from both states asserting jurisdictional claims.On Wednesday, following stiff resistance from Odisha, Andhra Pradesh shifted the polling booth from Neradivalsa — one of the disputed villages — to Sariki village, on its side of the border.A polling party from Andhra Pradesh, which had reached the Neradivalsa border, was prevented from entering the village.This, however, did not deter over 1,000 voters from the region who exercised their franchise, even if it meant taking an arduous 15-km trek through forests.Andhra women and child welfare minister Gumma Sandhya Rani said shifting the booth was not a retreat but a measure to ensure peaceful polling. “The actions of Odisha authorities were very harsh,” she alleged.Odisha deployed more than 16 platoons of police, each comprising around 30 members, across the sensitive border region. Three checkpoints were set up; roads were barricaded and movement across the interstate border was restricted.“We did not allow Andhra Pradesh officials to establish a polling booth inside our territory. However, some villagers, allegedly influenced by agents of Andhra Pradesh, crossed the border to cast their votes. The exact number is yet to be ascertained,” Koraput district collector Manoj Satyawan Mahajan told TOI.Officials in Andhra Pradesh said 1,150 of the 2,899 voters in Kotia exercised their franchise, recording a turnout of 40% — higher than in the 2021 rural local body elections.The opposition to Andhra Pradesh’s polling exercise had brought Congress, BJD and BJP together in Odisha, with politicians of the three parties joining the administration’s efforts to prevent polling arrangements inside the disputed territory.Congress’s Pottangi MLA Ram Chandra Kadam alleged that local agents had influenced tribal voters to participate in the elections. He suggested setting up a special Kotia development fund and launching income-generation programmes to counter the appeal of Andhra Pradesh’s welfare schemes.Several politicians, including Jeypore MLA Tara Prasad Bahinipati, Koraput MLA Raghuram Machha, former Koraput MP Jhina Hikaka and former Nabarangpur MP Pradeep Majhi, spent Wednesday night at Neradivalasa to monitor developments.Bahinipati alleged that villagers from Neradivalasa, Tolo Sembi, Upper Sembi and Phatuseneri had been taken to Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday and kept in shelters to facilitate polling.BJD member Lenin Mohanty, however, criticised Odisha govt for failing to prevent Kotia residents from participating in the elections. Centre should intervene to resolve the dispute, as the territorial boundaries of states could be determined only by Parliament, Mohanty said.However, Machha said the Kotia dispute is a decades-old issue and cannot be resolved through political allegations against Centre.The dispute over the Kotia cluster, comprising 28 villages, dates back to the 1930s. Odisha and Andhra Pradesh have been claiming administrative jurisdiction over 21 of the 28 border villages, with the matter pending before Supreme Court since 1968.(With inputs from Nalla Babu in Visakhapatnam)