Voting starts for Silchar & Karimganj seats, voters queue before 7 AM

April 18: Voting has started for the Phase II of Lok Sabha Election 2019 in 1461 and 1721 polling stations respectively for the Silchar and Karimganj Parliamentary Constituencies. People exhibited great enthusiasm and queued up much before the stipulated time of 7 AM. A total of 1191289 (613931 Male, 577283 Female & 75 third gender) electorates will be exhibiting their right to franchise for the prestigious Silchar seat, whereas 1338005 (696638 Male, 641349 Female & 18 third gender) voters will vote for the Karimganj seat.

Agents of different political parties were present in almost all the polling stations before the start of Mock Poll at 6 AM. According to the directives issued by the Election Commission, mock polling should be conducted one hour before polling and minimum 50 votes should be cast in EVMs in the presence of polling agents. Results of mock polling should also be shown to polling agents.

Apart from Silchar and Karimganj, polling in the second phase of the Lok Sabha Election on 18 April also began in Mangaldai, Autonomous District (ST) and Nagaon. A total of 6,910,592 electors will decide the fate of the candidates in the second phase of the Lok Sabha Election to be held on April 18^th, 2019. A total of 8992 polling stations have been set up for the polling of Lok  Sabha elections in five parliamentary constituencies of Assam.

A total of 5844 polling staff were deployed for the 1461 polling stations of Silchar constituency. It was further learnt that one Presiding Officer of Polling Station No. 146, Sector 9, LA 9-Silchar fell down from a table early in the morning, where he slept in the night. The injured Presiding Officer was rushed to Silchar Medical College & Hospital.

Report has just come in that voting at Abdul Kalam Azad LP School at Panchayat Road, Silchar could not be started due to non-functioning of EVM. Large number of people were reported to be waiting for casting vote at that centre. It was learnt that the Presiding Officer of that centre has asked for help from the Sector Officer. Voting in that centre started at 8.10 AM after the machine was set ok.

As per sources, in another school at Dholai Sector 40, Control Unit was found to display error before the start of Mock Poll as the machine exhibited the date of poll as 16-04-2019 instead of 18-04-2019. As such, the Sector Officer had to replace the Control Unit.

A total of 35,968 polling personnel and 169 companies of security forces have been deployed across the five constituencies for smooth conduction of polling. On the other hand, 3 police observers 137 Flying Squad Team (FST), 127 Static Surveillance Team (SST) and 105 Video Surveillance Team (VST) have been deployed for the Phase II polling. Polling stations with all women polling personnel under second phase are divided in Karimganj (11), Silchar (10), Autonomous Districts (ST) (23), Mangoldoi (67) and Nowgong (26).

More updates to follow…Stay tuned……