Padampur: Voting for Padampur by-elections has started with full security arrangements. After the mock polls, polling in all the booths began smoothly. Serpentine queues were seen many of the booths in Padampur, Jharbandha and Paikamal Blocks. Padampur Assembly Constituency has 2, 57, 474 voters who will vote in 319 polling booths. The voting began at 7 am and continue till 4pm. There are ten candidates in the fray including Barsha Singh Bariha of BJD, Pradip Purohit of the BJP and Satya Bhushan Sahu of the Congress.
The ECI has set up 15 Model Booths with facilities like Ramp, Temp. shed, separate queues, Drinking water, Volunteers for PwD and Senior Citizens etc. will be operating on the Poll day. Similarly, 06 Pink booths especially in urban areas totally manned by trained lady Polling Officers have been opened.
Special arrangement have been made for the 79 critical booths. In 120 booths, Web casting has been planned and in 66 booths there will be CCTV coverage. 91 Micro Observers have been deployed and extra CAPF deployment has been done in appropriate locations. A total of 1413 Police Personnel ( including 206 Police Officers, 21 platoon of Armed Police, 445 Havildars / Constables and 132 Home guards ) and 09 companies of CAPF have been deployed for the Polls.