About five lakh employees would give their services at 65,341 polling booths across 230 constituencies in Madhya Pradesh where about 5.04 crore voters will exercise their franchise on Wednesday. Voting would begin at 8 am and conclude at 5 pm in all constituencies barring three in naxal affected Balaghat district. Political analysts say that this is the closest contest in MP where CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan is pitched against Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia of Congress. Leaders of both the political parties had been on their heels for last more than a month.
Moreover all the prominent leaders have reached their hometowns where they will cast their votes. CM Chouhan will vote at his native village Jait in Sehore district. Congress state president Nath will cast his vote in Shikarpur in Chhindwara district, while Jyotiraditya Scindia will visit AMI Shishu Mandir in Gwalior to exercise his franchise. Chief Electoral Officer, VL Kantha Rao said that preparations are complete and all polling parties have reached the designated polling booths.
Besides deployment of 1.80 lakh police force including central armed police force, provision for videography, webcasting and CCTV have been made to ensure free and fair election, specially at 17,000 critical polling booths. Webcasting would be done from 6,500 polling booths while CCTV cameras have been installed at 6,700 polling booths. Moreover, provision for videography has been made at 4,600 booths.
Screens have been installed at offices of returning officers in all districts and at the office of election commission in Bhopal to monitor the developments 78,870 ballot units (BU) and 65,367 control units (CU) would be used during polls besides 65,367 VVPAT machines. Moreover, 15,548 BU, 12,248 CU and 13812 VVPATS are kept in reserve. “Instructions are given that in case of any complaint if replacement has to be done then it should not take more than 30 minutes,” said Rao.
CEO Rao said 1.80 lakh policemen and 3,00,782 government employees including 45,904 women staff have been engaged in election duty. Overall 12,363 micro observers have been deployed to keep eye on sensitive candidates. Highest numbers of female candidates are in fray from Chhatarpur where 7 females are contesting out of 16 candidates. Lowest number of female are appearing from Mehgaon where only one female is contesting out of total 34 candidates.