Central observers for Kharba bypolls

Statesman News Service

MALDA, April 2:- Following the guidelines of the election commission at least 36 micro observers will be appointed to monitor a total of 201 polling stations under the guidance of two central observers for conducting Kharba Assembly by election to be held on 12 April, district magistrate said today. “This is for the first time in West Bengal, after Tripura general elections that micro observers will be deployed experimentally to conduct free and fair election process”, said the Malda district magistrate Mr C R Das. According to him, micro observers will be appointed from middle level officer working in central government organisations. Initially 99 central government employees hadbeen enlisted for this job. Out of 99, the central observers will select at least 43 persons for the job and train them as micro observers. 20 per cent of them will be in reserve. “These micro observers will report to the central observers from polling stations independently based on the questionairs prepared by the election commission, said Mr CR Das. According to Mr CR Das, the Malda superintendent of police, Mr Satyajit Bandyopadhayay has sought 10 company central forces to deploy armed forces at each polling station considering all 201 booths as ‘sensitive'. “We expect that we will be getting at least 6 company central forces for this by poll”, the district magistrate said. State police will also be deployed at the link roads connecting all polling stations to maintain law and order. Besides polling personnel, another government official will be posted at each polling station to communicate information, related to any problem or any untoward incident occurring at the booths, over phone to the sector office for immediate actions. The election department has requisitioned more than 1700 government and semi government employees for election training to select at least 1200 polling personnel to conduct the bypoll. On 6 April the central observers will finalise the posting of the polling personnel randomely. The polling personnel will be informed about their posting when the polling team will move to their venue, just a day before the poll. The district administrative officials are also receiving applications from requisitioned employees, who are medically unfit, to delete their name from election duty. The election officials asked them to submit reasonable reply against a show cause notice who can not attend election the training before applying for striking off of their names from the list. ####