Arunachal: Over 7,000 CAPF personnel to be in state to ensure free & fair LS, Assembly polls

Itanagar: The Election Commission has deployed over 7,000 Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel and thousands of state security forces to conduct a free and fair simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Arunachal Pradesh, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Pawan Kumar Sain said on Monday.

He said that the CAPF personnel, comprising different para-military forces, have been deployed in all 26 districts of the state.

The CEO said the CAPF personnel have started the area dominance exercise in various vulnerable, mixed populated and sensitive polling stations and areas.

The election to the 60-member Arunachal Pradesh Assembly and in the two Lok Sabha seats would be held simultaneously in the first phase of elections on April 19. While briefing the media, the CEO said that of the total 2,226 polling stations in the state, 480 polling booths are in ‘shadow’ areas, while 588 stations have been identified as critical and 443 as vulnerable.

Shadow zones are those areas where there is poor or no mobile phone/ Internet connectivity.

There are a total of 228 polling stations in the state where the police and security personnel would have to go by foot march.

Of the 2,226 polling stations, 156 would be managed entirely by women staff.

CEO Pawan Kumar Sain said webcasting and enabling communication on a real-time basis would be available in 750 polling stations and offline webcasting would be done in 342 polling stations.

As per the direction of the Election Commission, various law-enforcing agencies have so far seized over Rs 3.88 crore in cash from various districts and recovered 378 unlicensed arms, he said, adding that out of 33,996 licensed arms in the state, licensed arms owners have so far deposited 2,400 arms in various police stations across the state.

The CEO said that to ensure free and fair polling without any violence, all efforts would be taken and any violation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) would be dealt with strictly.

“An additional deputy commissioner and a senior government official were suspended for doing favours to candidates,” he said.

Sain said that helicopters would be pressed into service to ferry officials and election materials in the remote areas if weather conditions are favourable during the election date.

In all, 8,86,848 voters, including 4,49,050 females are eligible to cast vote.

The statutory notification for both the Assembly and the Lok Sabha polls would be issued in Arunachal Pradesh on March 20, while the last date for filing nomination papers is March 27.

The last date for withdrawal of nominations is March 30. The counting of votes for the Assembly polls would be done on June 2, and for the Lok Sabha polls, on June 4.

–IANS