The fully-charged campaigning for ludhiana Municipal Corporation elections, slated for February 24, ended on Thursday with the Election Commission issuing prohibitory orders.
More than 10 lakh voters would seal the fate of as many as 494 candidates for the election of 95 wards of the ludhiana MC.
Out of these, 95 candidates each are from the SAD-BJP combine, lok Insaaf Party and Aam Aadmi Party combine, and that of the Congress, while remaining 209 are contesting as Independents.
The administration has imposed Section 144 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in the city. With this, assembly of more than five people is prohibited.
Nearly 10.50 lakh voters will exercise their franchise to elect representatives, comprising about 5.67 lakh male, 4.82 lakh female and 23 third gender.
ludhiana District Election Officer-cum-Deputy Commissioner Pradeep Kumar Agarwal held meeting with the election officials and issued some directions.
“The videography will be done by the Returning Officers of the sensitive polling station. In case, any candidate wishes to have videography, they can get it done with the prior written approval of the Returning Officer by stationing a camera outside the polling station,” said Agarwal adding that the expenditure or the same would be added in candidate's election cost.
He said that 1,153 polling booths have been set up in the areas under ludhiana MC.
As the counting will be done on February 27, nine strong rooms have been prepared at nine different locations to secure the (EVMs) electronic voting machines from February 24 to 27 which will be under CCTV surveillance for 24 hours, he said.
He added that there CCTV cameras will be equipped with Wi-Fi, and the election officers and candidates will be able to keep a watch on the rooms from any place by entering a password assigned to them.
This is for the first time in the recallable past that the results of a corporation elections will be announced after two days.
Congress, after sweeping the elections of three Municipal Corporations of Amritsar, Jalandhar and Patiala, is also confident of winning ludhiana civic body too. However, the opposition parties are alleging the ruling government of misusing the official machinery and adopting violent ways to win the elections.