Maha polls: 15 lakh personnel deployed across state

Mumbai, Nov 19 The state election machinery is fully prepared to hold polling on Wednesday for the 288-member Maharashtra Legislative Assembly with the deployment of 15 lakh personnel across the state.

The polling will begin at 7 am and end at 6 pm at 1,00,186 polling stations. More than two lakh police and security personnel are deployed to ensure the polling takes place in a peaceful and transparent environment.

This includes the manpower of the Maharashtra Police Force, Home Guard Force, Civil Defense Force, Central Armed Police Force, State Armed Police Force, and State Reserve Police Force. All these systems have been instructed to be alert and alert.

About 9.70 crore comprising 5.22 crore male and 4.69 crore female voters in 288 constituencies will exercise their right to vote for the assembly elections. Pune district is leading in the highest number of voters. There are a total of 4,136 candidates comprising 3,771 men, 363 women and two others in the fray.

The state joint chief electoral officer Kiran Kulkarni said that the polling staff is already on the way to reach their assigned polling stations. In the tribal-dominated Gadchiroli district, the staff is ferried in helicopters.

He said that an adequate number of EVMs are available in the state. There are 2,21,600 Ballot Units (221 per cent), 1,21,886 Control Units (122 per cent) and 1,32,094 VVPATs (132 per cent) available for 1,00,186 Polling Stations.

Out of the total EVMs, 5166 Ballot Units, 5166 Control Units and 5165 VVPATs have been used for training and awareness programs. All these Ballot Unit, Control Unit and EVM Machines have been already assembled from October 18 to 21 in all districts. In this election, one ballot unit is required in a total of 185 assembly constituencies. In 100 constituencies, two ballot units will be required and in three constituencies, three ballot units will be required.

He said that polling stations have been assigned in a such manner so that voters can vote smoothly. Of the total 1,00,186 polling stations, 42,604 are urban polling stations and 57,582 are rural polling stations.

“Taking into consideration the apathy of the voters in the urban areas especially from Mumbai, Thane and Pune, the state election machinery conducted various campaigns to increase the voting percentage. A total of 1,181 polling stations have been set up in high-rise buildings/cooperative housing society complexes in the cities. Also, 210 polling stations have been set up in slum areas. The total number of sub-polling stations is 241,” he added.

Kulkarni said there are two types of sensitive polling stations comprising expenditure and security.

“Incidentally, there is not a single vulnerable polling station in the state from the security point of view. In the case of expenditure polling stations, the state election machinery has given due attention,” he added.

He said that nearly 8,500 complaints were registered on the C Vigil app of which 10 to 12 others have already been addressed.

“The state election machinery has done a great job in the seizure of cash, liquor, freebies and other things with Rs 673 crore. There has been a five-fold increase compared with the seizure done during the 2019 assembly elections,” he added.

According to Kulkarni, during this code of conduct period, 532 FIRs have been filed.

Out of these, 210 cases are related to breach of model code of conduct and 63 cases are related to social media. While the remaining 259 cases are related to other matters.

(Sanjay Jog can be contacted at sanjay.j@ians.in)