Manipur gets busy in electoral activities for assembly polls

Imphal, Feb. 15: With the Manipur assembly elections are just 17 days away, election campaigns as well as other electioneering activities are on in full swing across the 60 assembly constituencies in the state since the past one week. On the last date of filing nominations, on Tuesday, for the first phase poll on March 4, as many as 215 candidates have filed their nomination papers while just 32 candidates filed their nomination papers for the second phase poll on March 8. The last date for filing nomination for the second-phase poll and scrutiny for the first phase will be held on February 16; the last date for the withdrawal of candidature for the first phase will be on February 18 while for the second phase it will be on February 20. In Manipur, the assembly elections will be held in two phases: March 4 and the 8th.The results will be declared on March 11 as the entire election process has been scheduled to complete before March 15. Meanwhile Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Pralhad Singh Patel, who is in charge of Manipur, addressed a press conference in Imphal on Wednesday morning. He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join the election campaigns for the BJP in poll-bound Manipur state on February 25. Reacting to allegations that Manipur’s iconic rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila was once advised by a BJP functionary that she would need Rs 36 crore to win the elections, BJP leader Patel alleged that it was ‘propaganda politics’ of the Congress party. In another development, both General and Police Observers of Bishnupur district on Wednesady had a meeting with officers of the district in the conference hall of the mini-secretariat, Bishnupur, about 35 kilometres south of Imphal. General Observer for Nambol, Oinam and Bishnupur Dr. Akhilesh Kumar Mishra; General Observer for Moirang, Thanga and Kumbi, Praveen N. Gedam; Police Observer for Nambol, Oinam and Bishnupur, Md. Ahsan Reza and Police Observer for Moirang,Thanga and Kumbi, Lungrinding interacted with the officer in-charge of their respective constituency.