General observer for Bhavani and Anthiyur Assembly constituencies, Prasanth Kumar Mishra, along with election officials, trekked 18 km (up and down) to inspect arrangements at a polling station at Kathirimalai village in the Anthiyur Assembly constituency on Wednesday.
Located inside the reserve forest area of Chennampatti Forest Range in Erode Forest Division, the hamlet has 276 members of which 134 are voters.
The Government Tribal Residential Middle School serves as the polling station (number four) and the village has no mobile connectivity and houses were provided with rooftop solar panels.
The village is located 58 km from Anthiyur of which road accessibility for nine-km is not available.
In the past two elections, donkeys ferried poll materials through the reserve forest .
The rough terrain road coming under the Forest Department was repaired and a pick-up van was operated in February on a trial basis to reach the village. Hence, it was decided to replace donkeys with the van to ferry poll materials on April 5. But, operating the vehicle in a steep slope was found to be risky and officials decided to deploy three donkeys.
On Wednesday, Mr. Prasanth Kumar Mishra, along with officials reached Lakkampatti, a village at the foothills in Salem district, at 8 a.m. and started climbing on foot and reached the village at 11.30 p.m.
He reviewed the arrangements at the polling station and interacted with local people and encouraged them to ensure 100% voting. The team started the return journey at 2 p.m. and reached the foothills at 5.30 p.m.
Officials said that after polling ends at 7 p.m. on April 6, officials have to climb down during night hours to the foothills and again start in a vehicle to the counting centre at Gobichettipalayam, which is located 75 km away.