Tura, April 17: With a day ahead for polls in West Garo Hills, the crucial phase of mobilization of EVMs and polling personnel along with the security teams started on Wednesday at the Inter-State Bus Terminal Tura (ISBT).
West Garo Hills has 539 polling stations and on the first day 50% of the Teams for the Polling Stations have been dispatched. The movements of the respective teams will be escorted by the police teams and the sector officers to the designated locations.
The total number of polling personals for West Garo hills is 2500 and 6100 personals for 2-Tura constituency in the entire Garo hills region. 1224 polling stations are there for entire region.
The election office has made adequate changes after an accident where a polling officer was killed due to an accident last year in the MLA elections.
Speaking to Hub news Jagdish Chelani, IAS District Election Officer/ Returning Officer said, “looking at what had happened last year in the election, we are not using any 4×4 vehicles for any teams and all the Polling Personals will be either going by Bus or LMV which are properly designed vehicles.
The election office has equipped police teams with Breath Analysers who will be performing checks on the drivers. If and incident detected the personal will be removed from the duty and disciplinary action will be taken towards that personal along with filing of cases against that person. A strict transportation plan is being enforced with the transportation of the polling personals as well as the materials.
A total of 600 vehicles has been used for this Parliamentary election out of which 239 vehicles are allotted to polling personals which includes buses and LMV and auxiliary vehicles. Vehicles for this 600 has been allotted for extra CRPF and State police which will be additionally deployed in critical and vulnerable polling stations.
The total number of EVMs in the disposal is 740 numbers for the West Garo Hills district. The EVMs go through three different rounds of checking before it is dispatched for the respective locations. A total number of 65 ECI Engineers are stationed in the district to support the polling personals on the voting day.
Speaking to Hub news the Returning Officer said, “along with the checking of the EVMs we do the commissioning of the EVMs prior to the dispatch to the polling station we check the authenticity and also the functioning.”
Five to seven polling station will be monitored by a sector officer on the poll day and two spare EVM’s will be at disposal of the officer who can give a quick reaction if there is any malfunction in the EVMs on the day of polling.
Speaking to Hub news the Returning officer said “ if their is a malfunction of the EVMs on the day of the polling the sector officer can replace the EVM within half an hour and as per ECI guidelines the time frame for the replacing a unit should not be more than two hours”.
All Team travelling with the EVMs will have GPS along with the Sector officers vehicle . The cVigil app will be used to track all the movements of the EVMs as well as the sector officers who will be carrying the extra EVMs. 50 Polling stations in the district will have Webcasting facilities who will be sending direct live feed to the Election Control rooms of the district. 78 locations in the district will also have micro observers.
67 police nakas, 40 SST naka, 77FST team are put up in the district to keep a track on the freebies money and liquor and also for immediate response for any complaint or violations of the MCC. The International border is sealed for 72 hours prior to the polling date.
Quick action response team has been placed in the police station in the entire district so that they can assist and respond to any kind of law and order situations.
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