Malda poll booths under EC scanner

Statesman News Service

MALDA, March 21. — The Malda election officials have started identifying those polling stations where an abnormal polling rate was recorded in the last election. The move has been initiated to identify the most vulnerable and sensitive polling stations so that addiditional security forces could be deployed there to conduct free and fair election, officials said today. Authorities said that based on the guidelines of the Election Commission, it was concluded that past records of political violence in the premises of the polling stations were not the main criteria to declare the polling stations as “sensitive” ones. “If a political party is getting over 90 per cent votes or more than that in a particular booth, that the booth should be identified as sensitive one”, a senior district election official informed.Such polling stations should be monitored strictly during election, with the deployment of sufficient forces and officials to conduct fair election, the officer said. After an all-party meeting, convened by the district magistrate yesterday, all the political leaders were informed that this year the election officials will also train the political leaders about how to handle EVM (electronics voting machine). In the next meeting, the election officials would also demonstrate about the EVM and the procedure of nomination filing and essential features for the submission of candidates nomination papers, including forms A and B.Officials said that the political leaders are still alleging that genuine names of voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls on the ground that they were dead, whereas the names of original dead voters are still there in the electoral rolls. The Malda district election officials have ensured them that they would try to make the electoral rolls more perfect till the publication of supplementary electoral rolls. #