All set for civic body elections

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, February 22

To complete the elections to the Ludhiana Municipal Corporation and bypolls to two wards in Payal and Jagraon Municipal Councils on February 24 smoothly and transparently, the District Electoral Officer-cum-Deputy Commissioner Pradeep Kumar Agrawal held a meeting with all returning officers (ROs), assistant ROs, sector officials and their police counterparts here today.

Commissioner of Police RN Dhoke and election observers also attended the meeting.

Agrawal said ROs would not leave their election constituency without his permission and would keep their mobiles switched on. He said each RO would closely supervise entire election process in his respective area.

Agrawal further said on the voting day (February 24), only polling staff, senior election officers, ROs, candidate or his polling agent, voter or authorised media representative will be allowed to enter into the polling station.

He said the polling agent should be a voter in that election area and only one polling agent would be allowed inside the polling station.

He further added that polling supervisors and their staff would reach stations a day before voting and would submit the EVMs at the strong rooms once the voting ends. Proper police security would be given to them.

The counting of votes will be held on February 27.

Active on WhatsApp

Those present at the meeting were asked to create a ‘WhatsApp group’ to keep connected with the team members for communication. He said a separate WhatsApp group would also be created which would have Commissioner of Police, additional district electoral officer, deputy commissioners of police, election observers, ROs and others as its members.

The electorate 

In the Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana, around 10.5 lakh voters would exercise their franchise to elect their representatives from 95 wards. Of the electorate, 5.67 are men, 4.82 lakh women and 23 belong to the third gender. 

Polling stations 

The District Electoral Officer said 1,153 polling stations (two auxiliary polling stations) would be set up for the Ludhiana Municipal Corporation elections, of which 284 stations had been identified as sensitive where the whole process would be videographed.

Videography 

The DC asked the ROs to videograph polling at all sensitive stations. If any candidate wanted to do it on his own, he should get permission in writing from the RO, which would allow his cameraman to do videography outside the polling station. He asked the ROs to add expenditure of videography to a candidate’s account, if anyone does so.

9 strongrooms

Nine strongrooms have been set up at nine places to keep EVMs. These strongrooms will be under the surveillance of CCTV cameras round the clock. These cameras will have the facility of WiFi and the election officials and candidates can access camera feed by entering a password from anywhere.