Special measures will be taken to build confidence among voters in areas affected by Maoist presence in the district, District Collector Mir Mohammed Ali, who is also District Election Officer, has said.
Addressing a press conference here on Monday about the arrangements being made for the coming Lok Sabha election in the district on April 23, Mr. Ali said Revenue and police officers had held a couple of meetings in areas suspected to have Maoist presence such as Aralam to ensure confidence among voters.
Border meetings of officials in the neighbouring districts had also been conducted in Kasaragod.
“We are in touch with officials in border districts as well so that if there is any issue coming up, we will be taking it up,” Mr. Ali said.
Study
He said a study had already been conducted for identifying critical, sensitive, hypersensitive and vulnerable booths in the district on the basis of problems and tensions in the past elections.
He also said that for the next few weeks the election officials would be strictly enforcing the model code of conduct (MCC).
In the Kannur Lok Sabha constituency, there are 12,12,678 voters under the limits of 1,172 polling stations.
The voters also include 5,492 NRI voters and 4,022 service voters.
The Parliament constituency comprises seven Assembly segments. Of the voters, 37,451 were new voters included during the revision this year.
18-19 age group
As many as 21,776 voters are in the 18-19 age group.
The Collector said that as the Election Commission’s message was that no voter should be left behind, steps, including special conveyance arrangements, would be taken to bring people with disability (PwD) voters to the polling stations.
The PwD voters included 937 visually impaired, 701 speech/hearing disabled, 1,962 locomotor disability and 1,904 other disability voters.
In force
The MCC would be in force till the polling process was completed, Mr. Ali said adding that a meeting of political party representatives would be held at 11 a.m. on March 12 to explain the enforcement of the MCC.
The parties should immediately remove campaign hoardings and banners and posters in public places and if they were displayed inside private land, they should secure consent from land owners, he said.
The toll-free number 1950 could be dialled to get information about voters list.
New enrolments in voters list could be made online in nvsp.in website till March 25, he said.
