Bengaluru: The Election Commission has directed the police department to take stringent action against the trouble mongers during the forthcoming Assembly elections.
“We held meetings with enforcement agencies and police on the preparedness for the forthcoming Assembly elections. We have asked the police to be ruthless against trouble mongers. We want State Assembly elections to be free and fair,’’ Chief Election Commissioner Om Prakash Rawat told reporters here on Thursday.
Apart from the state police, the Election Commission has decided to deploy Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) during the elections. “Security will be beefed up in sensitive and hyper sensitive areas during the elections,’’ the Chief Election Commissioner said.
He said that some political parties have expressed apprehensions over the law and order in the state. “They said agitations are being held at a few districts over Mahadayi river water dispute. They have also mentioned about the agitations against the political murders in Coastal Karnataka. I have directed the police department to take measures for the improvement of law and order in the state,’’ he said.
He said the Election Commission has decided to use the M2 electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the State Assembly elections. The M1 EVMs are manufactured till 2006 and M2 EVMs were upgraded further to incorporate to enable transfer of the message from Ballot Unit (BUs) to Control Unit (CUs) in an encrypted form making the message non-readable.
The new M3 EVM machines will have additional features. Tamper detection to make an EVM inoperative the moment anyone tries to open the machine and a Self-diagnostic feature to checks the EVM fully, every time it is switched on to detect any change in its hardware or software.
“We may use M3 EVMs at some polling booths,’’ he said.
On the allegations on the EVMs, the Chief Election Commissioner has said that Election Commission held a meeting with political parties and invited them to participate in the EVM hackathon but no political party evinced interest.
“Generally, the political parties make allegations after conducting the elections or announcing the election results,’’ he said.
Single phase
The Chief Election Commissioner has said that most of the political parties are for holding single-phase and one-day elections in the state.
“We are yet to take a final decision on it. Earlier, we have conducted elections to the Assembly. We did not face any logistics-related problems while conducting the elections,’’ he said.
Affidavits
The Chief Election Commissioner has said the affidavits filed by the candidates would be uploaded on the State Election Commission website within 24 hours. “This will facilitate people file objections if they have any on the veracity of the affidavit,’’ he said.
Satisfactory
The Chief Election Commissioner has expressed satisfaction over the progress made in preparations for the forthcoming Assembly elections. “All district election officers have done a good job in issuing voter identification cards and enrollment of voters. They have also completed the process of filing charge-sheets in cases pertaining to 2013 and 2014,’’ he said.
