Saturday, 06 April 2024 | PNS | DEHRADUN
On the orders of the Election Commission of India (ECI), 1,365 critical and 809 vulnerable polling booths have been identified in Uttarakhand. The Additional Chief Electoral Officer (ACEO), Vijay Kumar Jogdande told media-persons on Friday that those polling booths are kept in the vulnerable category where any incident involving a criminal case had happened in the past. Similarly, the booths where any incident of serious nature that had affected the voting in the past are also categorized under the vulnerable category.
Jogdande said that the ECI has also set up norms for the critical booths. The booths where less than 10 per cent votes were casted are categorised under critical category. Similarly such booths where more than 90 per cent polling had happened and more than 75 per cent of votes were cast in favour of any one candidate are also kept in the critical category. The ACEO further informed that the booths where more than average number of voters had shown documents other than Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) to exercise their franchise are also put in the category of critical booths.
He added that the process of identifying the critical and vulnerable booths is done by the sector officers and sector police officers.
Jogdande said that deployment of micro observers and arrangement for webcasting and videography is done in the critical booths.
Haridwar district has maximum (344) critical booths in the State. Dehradun has 278 and Udham Singh Nagar has 158 critical booths. Maximum number of vulnerable booths is in Dehradun where 243 such booths have been identified. Udham Singh Nagar has 229 and Nainital 201 vulnerable booths.
