ECI Gets Set For Polling On Thursday

Chennai: The Election Commission of India, making all arrangements for the conduct of the polls for the State Assembly Elections on Thursday, has deployed surveillance teams in all the Assembly Constituencies and are actively engaged in 24×7 monitoring, which led to the seizure of cash, liquor, narcotics and other gift items totally worth Rs 1212.74 crore – cash worth Rs 495 core was returned after verification subsequently- till Monday.The final electoral rolls prepared on April 6 has a total number of 5,73,43,291 electors – 2,80,30,658 of them male, 2,93,04,905 female and 7,728 belonging to the third gender – and they would be visiting 75,064 polling stations and 33,211 polling station locations to exercise their franchise on April 23, which would be a paid holiday for every person employed in any business, trade, industrial undertaking or any other establishment. A public holiday had been announced on the polling day and employers would have to give even those who work on shift basis and casual workers outside the constituency concerned a holiday to enable them to vote, a press release from the Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik said. All liquor outlets in the State and the border areas in the neighbouring States and Union Territories would be closed Tuesday, April 21 to Thursday, April 23, and then again on the day of counting, on Monday, May 4. A total of 7014 micro observers have been deputed, as one of the Non-CAPF measures, to critical polling stations for monitoring the booths and ensuring the election process was carried out in a free and fair manner. They would be supervised by 130 General Observers, besides 40 Police Observers, and 150 Expenditure Observers for the 234 Constituencies, the CEO said. Besides that, 83875 police personnel and 40427 non-police personnel had been assigned election duty with the Union Home Ministry allotting 300 companies of CAPF personnel for cross all districts, she said



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