Just about 12 hours before the people of Himachal Pradesh go to polling station for electing the next Government, State Election Commission on Wednesday said that all arrangements had been completed to conduct smooth and peaceful polling in the State.
Chief Electoral Officer Pushpender Rajput said that 3,7605 polling officials had reached their respective polling stations and polling would commence at 8 am in the morning. He said the official time for casting vote was till 5 pm but Election Commission had decided to extend polling time till 6 pm if it did not get over by 5 pm at certain places.
He said peaceful conduct of poll process was the prime objective of Election Commission and 51 polling booths in the state had been declared critical, where security arrangements had been specifically beefed up. He said that most of the polling stations on the border area had been included in the list of hyper-sensitive polling stations and 65 companies of central paramilitary forces and CRPF had been deployed at the polling stations on the border area and interstate nakas along Punjab, Haryana and Jammu. The official said that all the 51 critical polling booths had been linked with the web casting to keep an eye on the polling.
Rajput said 54 observers had been detailed in the State. In these observers, 29 are general observers, 3 police observers and 22 expenditure observers. To assist the observers, 71 Assistant Expenditure Observers, 1,561 Micro Observers, besides, 193 Sector Magistrate and 789 Sector officers had also been deployed across the state.
He said commission had arranged for web-casting in 2,307 polling stations and all these stations had been equipped with 4G internet connectivity and live monitoring of these stations would be done.
ADGP law and order Atul Sharma informed that about 17,850 police and home guards were deployed in the state including 11300 state police personnel, 5530 home guards. The state had even called 1,000 home guard jawan from Uttarakhand.
He said that CRPF jawans had been deployed at 395 vulnerable polling booths in the state. He said that 80 percent jawans of central paramilitary forces would be deployed at the polling stations and rest on the interstate borders.
Taking preventive steps, around 600 people with criminal back ground had been detained in the state. He said that all the proclaimed offenders (PO) had been either been detained or their names were deleted from the PO list. He said that there were a total of 222 POs in the state and all were taken in preventive custody. He said that 414 Non-bailable warrants had been executed against the people with criminal records in the state.
Giving details of seizures in the State, Rajput said 87,000 weapons had been got deposited in the State. While 5.2 Kg gold was also recovered by the poll parties while cash recoveries of 1.30 crore had also been made.
He said 3.35 lakh litre liquor had been seized in the State by the poll observing parties.