Notification issued for simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in Arunachal Pradesh

OUR CORRESPONDENT

Itanagar: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday issued a notification for conducting simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Arunachal Pradesh, in the first phase on April 19.

The state election office here has issued separate Gazette notifications for holding elections in 60 assembly constituencies and two Lok Sabha seats in the northeastern state. With the issue of notification, the process of filing nominations has started, Joint Chief Electoral Officer Liken Koyu informed.

The last date for filing nomination papers is March 27, and the scrutiny of papers will be done on March 28. The last date for the withdrawal of nominations is March 30. The counting of votes for the Assembly polls would be held on June 2, and for the Lok Sabha polls, it would be held on June 4, respectively.

The term of the present state assembly ends on June 2.

There are a total of 8,86,848 electorates in the state, including 4,49,050 female voters, 5,740 service voters, and five third-gender voters.

The state has a total of 2,226 polling booths, of which 156 would be managed entirely by women, 49 would be managed by youths, and three, especially by persons with disabilities (PWDs).

Altogether, 480 polling booths are in shadow areas in the state, while 588 booths have been identified as critical and 443 as vulnerable. The polling station No. 2-Pumao Primary School under Longding Assembly Constituency has the highest number of voters with 1462, while the Malogam temporary structure in Malogam village under Hayuliang Constituency in Anjaw district has only one female voter.

Polling station No. 18-Luguthang under Mukto constituency in Tawang district is the highest polling station in the state, located at an altitude of about 13,383 ft.

The photo electoral roll coverage in the state as of date is 100 percent, with an equal percentage of Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) coverage, Koyu disclosed.

He added that all necessary arrangements to conduct the elections have already been completed, and the training of all district election officers, returning officers, assistant returning officers, and various categories of nodal officers was completed by the CEO office.

Extensive awareness programmes about the use of EVM and VVPAT have been conducted in the districts, covering all accessible polling stations, including many foot-march locations. The joint CEO added that, for service voters, the electronically transmitted postal ballot system (ETPBS) would be used to facilitate hassle-free voting.

The first-level checking of EVMs has been completed in the entire state in the presence of representatives of national and state political parties over the course of the past many months, Koyu added. The ECI has deployed 75 companies of the Central Paramilitary Forces (CPMF) to conduct free and fair simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in the state, in addition to the available police force, state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Pawan Kumar Sain informed.

He said the CPMF companies have been deployed in all the districts of the state, and they have started area dominance exercises in various critical and vulnerable polling stations.

The ruling BJP won both Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 elections. In the assembly, the BJP bagged 41 seats, JD (U) won seven seats, the NPP won five seats, the Congress secured four seats, the PPA won one seat, and two independent candidates also won. The BJP has declared candidates for all the assembly seats and named Union Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju for the Arunachal West Lok Sabha seat and Tapir Gao as its candidate for the Arunachal East seat. The NCP has also announced the names of eleven candidates for the assembly polls.

 Also Read: ‘75 paramilitary companies deployed for Arunachal Lok Sabha, Assembly polls’

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