18.15L voters to seal fate of 19 candidates

Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, May 18

Stage is set for the general elections for the Jalandhar parliamentary seat as 18.15 lakh voters would decide the fate of 19 candidates who were in the fray for the LS seat.

Four of the 19 candidates in the fray are sitting MP and Congress candidate Chaudhary Santokh Singh, SAD candidate and former LS Deputy Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal, Justice Jora Singh (retd) from AAP and Balwinder Kumar from the BSP-PDA alliance. There will be two EVM machines in every polling booth as there will be 20 buttons, including that of NOTA.

Deputy Commissioner-cum-District Election Officer, Jalandhar, Varinder Kumar Sharma, Commissioner of Police Gurpreet Singh Bhullar and SSP Navjot Singh Mahal, who sent the polling parties from different centres today, said there were 16,15,171 voters in the district who would exercise their franchise. Of the total voters, 2,01,712 are in the Phillaur Assembly segment, 1,90,436 in Nakodar, 1,78,231 in Shahkot, 1,77,877 in Kartarpur, 1,62,979 in Jalandhar West, 1,66,002 in Jalandhar Central, 1,83,855 in Jalandhar North, 1,90,302 in Jalandhar Cantt and 1,63,777 in Adampur. They said 8,41,845 male voters, 7,73,306 female voters and 20 third gender voters will cast their votes.

The police officers said elaborate arrangements had been made for the poll as around 23,000 employees from the civil and police departments had been assigned various duties. They said 2,329 polling parties had been deployed at 1,863 polling booths of the district. The officers said 9,316 employees had been deputed as presiding officers, APROs and polling officers (PO) for conducting the poll in a transparent manner.

They said around 600 micro-observers had been deployed at 439 locations in the district. All arrangements had been made to ensure that polling parties and voters were facilitated. The officials said special provisions of wheelchairs, ramps, helpers and others would also be ensured at the booths for PwD voters.