Dust mistaken for smoke in HP poll strong room triggers panic

Shimla, May 20

Election officials, accompanied by representatives of various political parties, opened the strong room in Himachal Pradesh’s Reckong Peo on Monday morning after what appeared to be smoke was detected in the CCTV camera footage, a district official said.

Firefighters reached the spot in no time as it was feared that a fire had broken out, he said.

However, later it was found that the cameras were set to the night vision mode and dust particles spreading in a corner of the strong room gave the impression that it was smoke, he said.

Subsequently, the setting of the CCTV cameras was changed and the strong room was sealed again, the official said.

Reckong Peo, also known as Peo, is the district headquarters of Kinnaur. The strong room here is located in Bachat Bhawan and 252 electronic voting machines (EVMs) from 126 polling stations of Kinnaur assembly segment, falling under the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency, have been kept here.

Mandi saw 17 candidates--the highest in all constituencies, try their luck in the Lok Sabha polls. PTI