Nagaland all set for by-polls in two Assembly seats

Nagaland is all set to go for by-polls on Tuesday for two Assembly seats in 14 Southern Angami-1 and 60 Pungro Kiphire Assembly constituencies.

Abhijit Sinha, Chief Electoral Officer speaking to Northeast Live said that polling will start from 6 am till 4 pm and polling parties for both the constituencies have been dispatched and adequate security arrangements have also been made for the bypolls.

“In both constituencies, about 600 polling personnel are involved for poll duty and the polling parties besides the presiding officer, 4 more polling officials particularly for thermal screening of voters and if any voters temperature is found high they will be asked to come in the last hour to vote,” said Abhijit Sinha.

He further informed that all polling stations are being sanitized and arrangements are being made for voters to maintain social distancing and addition to that transportations will also be provided for COVID 19 patients to cast their vote in the last hour.

Sinha said adequate security forces from the CAPF, IR and NAP will be provided in all the polling stations and additional force will be deployed in the polling stations which has been categorised as critical and vulnerable.

“In both the constituencies there will be a sufficient number of striking reserve teams who will be there in case of any exigencies, law and order situation they will be moved swiftly to those locations to contain,” he added.

Sinha also informed that during the election period in both the districts, drive for deposition of licensed arms were conducted where a total of 86 licensed arms were deposited and a total of 3 illegal Arms and 17 cartridges were seized.

Whereas total cash seized till November 1 is worth Rs 6,00,500, liquor amounting to Rs 6,64,000, cough syrup amounting to Rs 70,000 has been seized.

He said webcasting will be done in all the 22 polling stations in 14 Southern Angami-1 whereas, 30% of webcasting will be done in 60 Pungro Kiphire and the remaining 70% will be offline videography due to poor internet connection.

There are 8 candidates in the fray for the bypolls with a total number of 22 Polling stations and 13,641 voters in 14 Southern Angami-1 and 77 polling stations with a total of 29,601 voters in 60 Pungro Kiphire AC.