Arunachal: Notification issued for simultaneous LS, Assembly polls

Itanagar: The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday issued notification for simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in Arunachal Pradesh, in the first phase on April 19.

The state election office here has issued separate gazette notifications for holding elections to 60 assembly constituencies and two Lok Sabha seats in the northeastern state.

With the issue of notification, the process of filing nominations has started, Joint Chief Electoral Officer Liken Koyu said.

The last date for filing nomination papers is March 27 and scrutiny of papers would be done on March 28. The last date for withdrawal of nominations is March 30.

The term of the present state assembly is ending on June 2.

There are a total of 8,86,848 electorates in the state including, 4,49,050 female voters, 5,740 service voters and five third-gender voters.

The state has a total of 2,226 polling booths out of which 156 would be managed entirely by women, while 49 would be managed by youth and three especially by persons with disabilities (PWDs).

Altogether 480 polling booths are under shadow areas in the state, while 588 booths have been identified as critical and 443 as vulnerable.

The polling station No 2-Pumao Primary School under Longding assembly constituency has the highest number of voters with 1,462, while the Malogam temporary structure in Malogam village under Hayuliang constituency in Anjaw district has only one female voter.

Polling station No 18-Luguthang under Mukto constituency in Tawang district is the highest polling station in the state, located at an altitude of about 13,383 ft.

The photo electoral roll coverage in the state as on date is cent per cent with equal percentage of Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) coverage, the Joint Chief Electoral Officer disclosed.

He said that all necessary arrangements to conduct the elections have already been completed and training of all District Election Officers, Returning Officers, Assistant Returning Officers and various categories of nodal officers were completed by the CEO's office.

Extensive awareness programmes about the use of EVM and VVPAT have been conducted in districts covering all accessible polling stations including many foot-march locations, the Joint CEO said, adding, for service voters, electronically transmitted postal ballots system (ETPBS) would be used to facilitate hassle-free voting.

First-level checking of EVMs has been completed in the entire state in the presence of representatives of national and state political parties, Koyu added.

The ECI has deployed 75 companies of Central Para Military Forces (CPMF) to conduct free and fair simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in addition to available police force in the state, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Pawan Kumar Sain said.

He said, the CPMF companies have been deployed in all districts of the state and they have started area dominance exercise in various critical and vulnerable polling stations.

The ruling BJP won both Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 elections. In the assembly, the BJP bagged 41 seats, JD(U) won seven seats, the NPP won five seats, the Congress secured four seats, the PPA won one seat and two Independent candidates also won.

The BJP has declared candidates for all the assembly seats, and named Union Earth Sciences Minister Kiren Rijiju for the Arunachal West Lok Sabha seat and Tapir Gao as its candidate for the Arunachal East seat.