Elactions Loksabha 2019: EC takes special efforts to conduct polls in Telanganas Nizamabad, Miao Assembly seat in Arunachal

The Election Commission (EC) has deployed a massive assortment of polling staff and machinery to conduct elections in the Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat in Telangana and an Assembly seat in a remote border village in Arunachal Pradesh, the poll panel said on Thursday.

As many as 25,000 ballot units, 2,000 control units and VVPAT machines and a team of 750 engineers have been deployed as part of a "first-ever" measure to conduct polls in the Nizamabad constituency of Telangana, where a total of 185 candidates are in the fray.

"For the first time, we have connected 12 ballot units to one control unit and a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machine to conduct the polls on April 11," Deputy Election Commissioner (DEC) Sudeep Jain told reporters here.

These challenges came as there were 185 candidates contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from Nizamabad, he added. In the case of the far-flung Changlang district in Arunachal Pradesh, about 12 km from the India-Myanmar border, the EC has undertaken massive efforts at four polling stations to conduct the election.

DEC Chandra Bhushan Kumar told reporters that the poll panel had already airdropped a team for the April 11 polls in the Miao Assembly seat in the district. The rest of the polling teams will be airlifted and if that is not possible due to inclement weather, they will have to walk for five-six days to reach the remote polling booths of the constituency -- Ramnagar, Gandhigram, Vijoynagar, and Two-Hut, Kumar said.

The four polling booths had a total of 1,504 male voters and 1,677 female voters, he added. An EC official said these polling booths could only be approached by traversing through very treacherous and inhospitable terrain, including going through the Namdapha national park, and the distance could be gauged from the fact that sugar and salt cost about Rs 200 per kg at those locations.

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