ECI Gets Set For Polling On Thursday

Chennai: The Election Commission of India, which has made all arrangements for the conduct of polls for the State Assembly Elections to be held on Thursday, has deployed surveillance teams in all Assembly Constituencies and is actively engaged in 24×7 monitoring; this led to the seizure of cash, liquor, narcotics and other souvenirs worth a total of Rs 1212.74 billion – cash worth Rs 495 crore was returned by Monday after verification.

The final voter rolls prepared on April 6 include a total of 5,73,43,291 voters, including 2,80,30,658 men, 2,93,04,905 women and 7,728 third gender voters, and they will visit 75,064 polling stations and 33,211 polling places to exercise their voting rights on April 23. Anyone working in any business, trade, industrial enterprise or any other establishment.

A press release by Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik stated that the polling day has been declared a public holiday and employers will have to give holidays to even those working on shift basis and temporary workers outside the constituency to vote.

All liquor outlets in the State and border areas in neighboring States and Union Territories will be closed from Tuesday, April 21 to Thursday, April 23 and then again on Monday, May 4, the census day.

As one of the non-CAPF measures, a total of 7014 micro observers were deployed at critical polling stations to monitor booths and ensure free and fair conduct of the election process. These will be supervised by 130 General Observers, along with 40 Police Observers and 150 Expenditure Observers for 234 Constituencies, the CEO said.

Besides this, 83,875 police personnel and 40,427 non-police personnel have been assigned to election duty, with the Union Home Ministry allocating CAPF personnel to 300 companies for all districts, he said.