Arunachal Pradesh goes to poll on Friday amidst forecast of rain

ITANAGAR: With weather likely to play spoilsport, Arunachal Pradesh is all set to vote on Friday to elect two Lok Sabha MPs and 50 members of the state legislative assembly.

 Even as the Indian Meteorological Centre (IMD) has forecasted moderate to high rainfall in the northeastern state during the poll day, all necessary arrangements have been completed to conduct polling.

Out of the total 60 assembly seats, the ruling BJP has won ten seats without any contest. Polling which will begin at 7 AM will come to end at 5 PM.

“We have arranged temporary shelters with all basic facilities in the polling booths where people can wait for voting, if weather is not conducive,” Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Pawan Kumar Sain informed.

The Election Commission has also arranged special facilities for the persons with disability (PwD) voters, including transportation to polling booths, installation of ramps among others, the CEO said. There are 5,596 PwD electorates in the state.

“Commissioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) was completed and polling officials for remote booths have already reached their respective destinations,” Sain said.

There are 228 polling stations in the state out of the total 2,226, which could be reached only through foot march. Out of these, to reach 61 polling stations it requires two days of foot-march, while in seven other booths polling officials have to march for three days to reach their respective destinations.

 As many as 480 polling booths fall under shadow areas, while 588 booths have been identified as critical and 443 as vulnerable. An estimated 8,92,694 voters including 4,54,256 female, will decide the fate of 133 candidates contesting in the assembly polls and 14 contesting in the two Lok Sabha seats.

The Election Commission has appointed 15 general observers, six police observers and as many as 25 expenditure observers to oversee the poll process in the state. A total of 11,130 polling officials have been deployed to conduct the polling process while 6,874 EVMs would be used in 2,226 polling booths of the state for conducting the simultaneous polls.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made to conduct peaceful polling in the state with deployment of 70 companies of central armed police forces (CAPF) including IRBn and state police forces to manage law and order.

Around 13,176 personnel of CAPF and state police are working on ground to conduct peaceful polling in the state, the CEO disclosed. He added that since the announcement of the poll in the state, as many as 36 law and order incidents have been registered where one person died and another 33 injured.

Sain informed that for monitoring of the poll process, webcasting and enabling communications on real-time environment (ENCORE) would be done in 750 polling stations through online basis while, offline webcast facility would be available in 342 polling stations.

He added that as many as 87 inter-state nakas are operational in the state to thwart off any anti-social elements from neighbouring states from disrupting the poll process. The state police have arrested 199 people so far for creating law and order problems and 4,123 persons with previous records of poll violence have been bound down.

The election authorities in the state had seized 753 illegal arms and achieved the cent per cent target of depositing a total of 33,996 licensed arms in various police stations. Cash amounting to Rs 8.10 crore and other items including, Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) worth Rs 4.6 crore, drugs (Rs 82.5 lakh) and freebies worth 2.63 crore were seized in the state till date, the CEO said.

The BJP had fielded 60 candidates in all the assembly seats while opposition Congress put 19 nominees, National People’s Party (NPP) contesting in 20 seats, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in 14, People’s Party of Arunachal in 11, Arunachal Democratic Party (ADP) in four and Lok Janshakti Party in one seat.

There are also 14 independent candidates in the fray. In the Arunachal West Parliamentary seat, eight candidates are in the fray including Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju and Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) President Nabam Tuki. Altogether six candidates are vying for the Arunachal East Parliamentary seat including sitting BJP MP Tapir Gao and APCC vice president Bosiram Siram.

The BJP had won both the Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 elections while in the assembly, the party bagged 41 seats, JD (U) won seven seats, NPP won five, the Congress secured four seats, the PPA won one seat and two Independent candidates also emerged victorious.

Also Read: Rebels’ interference in polls will not be tolerated: Arunachal Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer

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