Illicit items worth Rs 102 cr seized: CEO
Source: Chronicle News Service

Imphal, February 17 2022: As part of the precautionary measures taken up for the upcoming election, illicit items worth Rs 102 crore have been seized so far, said Manipur chief electoral officer (CEO) Rajesh Agrawal.

Briefing the media on Thursday, he elaborated the seized items include Rs 84.7 crore worth of drugs/poppy and Rs 1.475 crore of cash by Income Tax sleuths.

He said 286 security check points have been made operational especially for the elections ard informed that 80.53 per cent of arms (18039) has been deposited as against 59.76 per cent in the 2017 Elections.

SST, Police, Excise and Taxation departments are on high alert, he maintained, adding that 6456 persons have been 'bound down', a total of 328 FIRs registered since August 1, 2021 including 60 cases under NDPS.

Adequate number of Central Paramilitary Forces/CAPF are being deployed and effectively used in area domination and in vulnerable pockets /hamlets, as a step towards confidence building amongst the electorates, he added.

The CEO also mentioned that a tracker application (Traccer) will be used to systematically track the movement of each identified election official on the day of election.

A companion traccer app will be installed on each official with required permissions and must be put on all the time to be able to track their locations.

E-atlas will be used for mapping information of status of safe arrival of polling officers, voter at queue reporting service, live incident reporting service.

The Sector teams will be tracked through these apps and communication in case of any emergency/functional issues of EVMs will be flagged and reported through these Apps to the Sector Teams.

These Apps are innovation of Manipur and are in place only in the state.

Rajesh also informed that a total of 600 All Women Polling stations will be established in the state and one out of every five Polling Station will be manned by Women Polling Personnel.

He said 13,203 voters have been newly added to the Electoral Rolls during the continuous updation and the total electors on the Final Electoral Roll for ensuing elections now stands at 20,48,169 .

A total of 173 candidates are' contesting in phase-1 election, out of which 15 are females while 92 candidates are in the fray for the second phase, out of which two are females.

There were two withdrawals and one rejection in Phase-I, and two withdrawals and two rejections in Phase-2.The nomination paper in respect of Lunkhopao Haokip, NPP candidate from 42-Chandel AC has been rejected as he is found to be disqualified under Section 9A of the Representation of People Act, 1951, the electoral officer added.

A total of 56 candidates out of 265 candidates are having Criminal antecedents.

On Postal Ballots, CEO stated that ETPBS for service voters have been dispatched electronically by all ROs.

Service voters will mark and send the postal ballots to ROs by post.

Only those Postal Ballots received before 8 AM of March 3, 2022 will be taken up for counting.

A total of 13,274 Service voters for Phase-1 and 8670 voters in phase-2 can now send Postal ballots.

A total of 8711 Absentee voters will be exercising their franchise through Postal ballot, which includes 1261 Person with Disabilities, 7434 Senior citizens and 16 persons belonging to the Essential Services, he said.

Rajesh also touched upon COVID management and said that the Election Commission has revised the election campaign gathering guidelines for Outdoor physical meeting at 50% of the capacity of designated open ground or as fixed by DEOs as per requirement of social distancing norms.

Pad-yatras are allowed with maximum of 100 persons and with written permission of the DEO.

All requisite permission shall be obtained from SUVIDHA portal.

The CEO also maintained that meticulous planning are in place to ensure network connectivity, disruption- free power during the polling days.

Security Management Plan and Communication Plan are being finalised for the elections.

Shadow area Action Plan is in place for 62 polling stations across state.

Satellite phones, VHFs and booster/repeater stations will be established to fill the communication gaps, he added.

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