All efforts on to ensure free and fair polls: Commissioner

Principal Correspondent
Kohima, Mar 14

Nagaland Commissioner and Returning Officer for Lok Sabha poll, Temjen Toy today asserted that all efforts have been made to ensure free, fair and transparent election in the state.
Addressing a press conference at his official chamber here this evening, Toy said that besides the micro and assistant expenditure officers deputed from the central services, two each general and expenditure observers and one police observer would in the state to oversee the election process.
He said one general election observer deputed by the Election Commission of India (ECI) has already arrive the state and he has started the work.
Maintaining that the expenditure limit of a candidate has been fixed at Rs. 70 lakh, he said since Nagaland is declared one amongst the six ‘Expenditure Sensitive’ state, lot of attention will be given to check the expenditure of the candidates during the election.
On the apprehension of the political parties about fair distribution of plastic photo elector’s identity card, he said asserted that elaborate arrangement has been made to ensure that there is no unfair distribution of plastic EPIC and every electorate will receive it to exercise their franchise.On the query about wrong entry of names in the EPIC, he said even as there might be some mistakes but if the polling officer is convinced about the identity of the person, he/she can exercise the franchise.
Nonetheless, he said the important aspect even if one has the EPIC is that his/her name should not have been deleted from the photo electoral roll.
On the law and order, the Commissioner maintained it has been peaceful while expressing the hope that the same situation would prevail and continue till the elections are over. “We don’t foresee any major problem even in the future,” he said.
Accepting that central forces would be used for law and order problem during the election, he however said as of now it was not clear how many forces would be deputed to the state by the Centre.
He also revealed that the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) has already been constituted at the State and District levels to certify and check paid news.
Maintaining that the official notification about the polls would issued tomorrow, the RO said that nominations would open from tomorrow with March 22 as the last date of nomination, scrutiny would be conducted on March 24, last date of withdrawal is March 26 and the polling would be conducted on April 9 while counting of votes would be done on May 16.
He said that after the polling is over, the EMVs would be kept in the strong rooms of the respective district covered by CCTV.
He also said that all the critical events of the polling would be video-graphed.
He also said that a total of 10,294 polling personnel will be pressed to perform the general duty during poll while 5029 vehicles would be utilized to ferry the polling personnel to 2059 polling stations throughout the state.
Out of the 2059 polling station, he said 1125 are declared normal, 508 as vulnerable (earlier known as sensitive) and 426 as critical (earlier known as hyper-sensitive) polling stations.
There are 11,74,663 general voters while 51,218 are service voters, which takes the number to 11,79,881 electorates in the state, he said, adding that Dimapur II A/C has the highest number of voters with 47,086 voters and Mokokchung Town A/C has the lowest number of voters with 5772 voters.
Toy revealed that on the day of the polling, every district would be having a Model Polling Station with all basic minimum facilities available for the electorates like toilet, drinking water, adequate lighting and also facilities for the physically challenged.