Imphal, January 03: In view of the Lui-Ngai-Ni festival, the second phase poll which was scheduled to be held on February 15 has been preponed to February 14.Disclosing this to The Sangai Express a well placed source said that the decision to prepone the date of the second phase poll was taken keeping in mind the importance of the Naga seed sowing festival, which has been billed as a tourism festival.

Holding the poll on the day of the festival may lead to undesired developments, said the source and hence the decision to prepone it by one day.

Significantly a number of political parties had urged the EC team today either to prepone the second phase poll or defer it by one day in view of the said festival.

There is no change in the first phase poll on February 8 which will see Ukhrul, Senapati and Thoubal going to the polls.

There is also no change in the third phase poll on February 23 where the election will be held at Chandel, Churachandpur, Tamenglong and Jiribam sub-division.

Even as the date for the second phase poll has been changed, a meeting of the Strategic Operations Group was held today at the Banquet Hall of 1st MR to discuss the security measures to be taken up for the election.

The SOG meeting was held soon after the arrival of Union Home Secretary VK Duggal today.

A number of top civil, military and police officers including Chief Secretary Jarnail Singh, DGP AK Parashar, ADGP, IGPs, GOC of 57 Mountain Division, IG AR (South), IG of CRPF (Manipur and Nagaland) and DIG of BSF were present at the meeting.

Apart from reviewing the law and order situation in the State, the meeting also discussed on the measures to be taken up to ensure a free and fair election.

According to a reliable source, all the polling stations will be manned by Central security force while the State police will be on security duty around all the polling stations.

Though the State Government had asked the Centre to deploy a large number of security personnel, for the moment it has been decided that 150 companies of security personnel would be deployed.

At the moment there are 66 companies including the BSF, CRPF and MR.VK Duggal also met the Governor and the CM separately.

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