With the date of State Assembly elections drawing closer, the election preparations are also getting intense. For the first time the Election Commission of India has decided to deploy awareness observer for the State Assembly elections scheduled in five States.
Since Chhattisgarh is the first State where elections would be held, the awareness observers have started reaching the State. Sources in the office of Chief Electoral Officer informed that two awareness observers have already arrived. In all nine awareness observers would look after the awareness among voters during the elections. They will then submit their report to the ECI so that new ways to ensure better participation of voters could be formed, sources said.
Sources revealed that awareness observers for Kanker and Bastar region have arrived. Notably, the first phase of election would be conducted on November 11 which will cover the 18 Naxal-violence-hit constituencies. According to sources awareness observer Nungasanlamba would observe constituencies falling under Kanker and Rajnandgaon region while TVK Reddy would see the entire Bastar region.
Further, the rest of awareness observers are expected to arrive Raipur by October 18. It was also learnt that Anindya Sengupta shall see Raigarh, Vijay Kumar would observe Koriya region, Ajay Agrawal would look after Janjgir-Champa. Similarly YK Baweja in Mungeli and Dheeraj Singh would look after Baloda Bazaar region. In addition to these two more observes will reach the State.
Meanwhile, Inspector General of Police (Raipur) GP Singh who is coordinating with the State Election Commission informed that by October 20 police observers would also start reaching Chhattisgarh. He said the police observers would watch the law and order situation, deployment of forces and working of police during the election. To the query about numbers of police observer to be deployed he denied commenting and said that the office of Chief Electoral Officer has the information related to police observers.