In order to encourage voters to cast their votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections 2019, the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Monday announced to set up one "Pink Polling Station" in each constituency that will be manned only by women staff. Also, the commission and the railways have decided to engage four long-distance trains to carry motivational messages for the electorate along with contact details such as voter helpline number and the National Voters' Services Portal address to exercise their franchise.
Around 13,816 polling stations would also be set up in 2,696 locations with each assembly constituency having a model polling station. Also, one polling station for the physically disabled persons will be set in each constituency. Further, there would be 433 critical polling stations.
After the Kerala Express, the Election commission will also flag off the Himsagar Express, Howrah Express and Guwahati Express with motivational messaged as part of this voter awareness campaign.
"Besides encouraging the voters to cast their votes, the Delhi CEO will also assure the minimum facilities for the voters such as provision for ramp, drinking water, adequate Furniture, medical kit, proper lighting, help desk, proper signage, toilet, shed, volunteers for queue management, crèche for children. Transport facility will be provided for the differently-abled persons and provision of ramps have already been made for the disabled persons in 13702 Polling Stations(PS) out of the total 13816 PS," said Ranbir Singh, CEO, Delhi.
As per the latest data shared by the Delhi CEO, As many as 97 FIRs have been registered against various political parties and others for violation of the model code of conduct. Out of these, 10 is against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), 10 against the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), two against the Congress, one against the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) , and 74 against the heads of political parties.
Singh further said that a statistic surveillance team has been constituted by the commission to keep a close eye on the expenses of the political parties. Till now, total amount of Rs 51.97 lakh cash from outer Delhi and Dwarka have been seized. "We are also keeping an eye on the social media, the teams are aggressively monitoring the social media sites to curb the violations of poll code," sing said.
Till now 2.44 lakh posters, banners and hoardings have been removed since the poll code came into force on March 10 for the general elections. Total 30,533 posters, banners and hoardings have been removed by New Delhi Municipal Council, 43,075 from East Delhi Municipal Corporation areas, 2,411 from Delhi Cantonment Board, 81,967 from South Delhi Municipal Corporation, and 86,623 from North Delhi Municipal Corporation.
Delhi Police have registered 564 FIRs and arrested 560 people under the Excise Act. A total of 191 FIRs have been registered under the Arms Act in which 229 people were arrested. They have also seized 298 unlicensed arms and weapons, and 2,323 cartridges and explosives. As many as 40,965 people have been booked till date under various sections of the CrPC and the Delhi Police Act.
Special commissioner of police (elections), Praveer Ranjan said, "Details of cash seizure have been sent to the Income Tax department and a report is awaited. Adding to it he said, I-T department officials will analyse if the cash was meant for polling purposes or not."
"Till date, 738 bottles, 67 half-sized bottles, 81,915 quarter-sized ones of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and 475 bottles, 762 half-sized and 155458 quarter-sized ones of country liquor and 4,861 bottles of beer have been seized,"
The Lok Sabha being conducted in seven phases will begin on April 11 and continue till May 19.
The elections in Delhi will held on May 12. There are over 1.4 crore voters on Delhi's electoral roll, out of which 2,04,420 are in the age group of 18-19. The total number of voters are 1,40,80,442, out of which 77,51,908 are male and 63,27,866 female, while 668 are third gender.