Lok Sabha elections 2019: Observers appointed for Gurgaon

The Election Commission of India(EIC), on Friday, appointed observers for the Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency. The observers will be reaching the city on April 16, the day on which the notification for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections will be issued.

Haryana is scheduled to go to polls on May 12, and the result will be declared on May 23.

Amit Khatri, deputy commissioner(DC), Gurugram, who is also the returning officer said that Manmeet Nanda has been appointed as the general observer and Neeraj Kumar as the expenditure observer. Both of them will reach Gurugram on April 16, Khatri said.

The DC also said that the process of randomisation of the electronic voting machines (EVM) that will be sent to different booths was also carried out in the presence of the representatives of the contesting political parties.

Randomisation of EVMs is done in two stages to ensure that these machines are not pre-programmed in favour of a particular candidate and that these are selected randomly to be sent to polling booths. The EVMs are selected in such a way that nobody comes to know which polling station is getting which machine, so as to leave no chance of any rigging.

Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency has 1,877 ballot units, 1,459 VVPAT units that shall be deployed in 1,113 polling booths. The total number of voters in the constituency is 20 lakh spread
across nine assembly constituencies of south Haryana.

As per the district election office, Sohna has 230 polling booths, Gurugram has 311, Badshahpur has 331, Pataudi has 241, Bawal has 257, Rewari has 248, Nuh has 191, Firozpur Jhirka has 242 and Punhana has 194.

Speaking on the occasion, Khatri said that if the political parties had any doubts on the working of the EVMs then they should get them cleared. He also said that randomisation to send the EVMs to booths is conducted through a computer software and the process is transparent. The next round of randomisation will be carried out in the presence of election observers, appointed on Friday, and political representatives, he said.

First Published: Mar 30, 2019 01:27 IST