Election exercise at district level begins in state

Imphal, February 17 : With the commencement of the exercise for the ensuing 15th Lok Sabha elections-2009 in Manipur, the Chief Electoral Officer, Manipur has directed the deputy commissioners (district electoral officers, DEOs) to identify the list of hypersensitive, sensitive and normal polling stations based on the criteria laid down by the Election Commission and submit the same to his office by February 20 at the latest.

Deputy Commissioners have also been asked to arrange meetings between the Booth Level Officers (BLOS) and Booth Level Agents (BLAs) at all the polling stations on 23rd of this current month (February 23) for verification and rectification of the finally published photo electoral rolls.

The electorate size in the whole of the state is 17,27,240, according to the latest photo rolls published on January 10 last with January 1, 2009 as qualifying date.

Of the total 8,25,019 are under the Inner Manipur Parliamentary Constituency while the rest 9,02,221 are in the Outer Parliamentary Constituency (ST reserve).

According to the source from the CEO office, the final electoral roll plus continuous updated rolls will be used in the forthcoming 15th Lok Sabha Election-2009, official source said Monday.

Mention may be made that with a hint to make announcement to the schedule of the general elections-2009 anytime in the last week of this current month February, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had convened a meeting with the representatives of all recognized national and state political parties and obtained theirs views/suggestion for smooth conduct of the forthcoming elections.

On received of the instructions from the ECI, in the state too, election authorities have started election exercise after two rounds of meeting (one with all recognized political parties operating in the state and another with the district level police and civil administrative officers) to chalk out strategies for smooth conduct of the election in the two Parliamentary constituencies- Inner Manipur and Outer Manipur Parliamentary, in the state.

The total number of the polling stations in the state has recently been increase by 132 after rationalization exercise was conducted to take the total number of polling stations across the state to 2193.Out of the existing polling stations 970 polling stations are within no.1-Inner Manipur Parliamentary Constituency and the rest 1223 are in within the no.2-outer Manipur Parliamentary Constituency (ST).

The CEO asked the DCs to identify the hypersensitive, sensitive and normal polling station in consultation with the district superintendent of police of their respective districts and submit the same by February 20 at the latest.

The CEO further directed all DCs/DEOs, ADCs and SDOs to conduct physical verification of all polling stations falling under their jurisdiction and submit a status report of polling stations building along with proposal for any repairing (if any) to his office latest by February 20, the official source disclosed.

As in the previous elections in the state Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) will be used in forthcoming election too and six engineers from Bangalore have arrived in the state and started conducting First Level Checking (FCL) of all EVMs available in all district headquarters (including Jiribam and Kangpokpi) one another.