Election Commission of India announces Assembly polls schedule for Goa, Punjab, Manipur, Uttarakhand Uttar Pradesh.
As COVID cases soared in view of Omicron variant, ECI held meetings with Union Health Secretary Home Secretary, experts, health secretaries of States. After taking these views ground situation, ECI decided to announce polls with safety norms in place.
A total of 18.34 crore electors including service voters will take part in this election out of which 8.55 crore are women electors.
24.9 lakh first-time electors are registered in the 5 States including Uttar Pradesh.
ECI has mandated that at least one polling station managed exclusively by women shall be set up in every Assembly constituency. Our officers have identified much more than that. There’re 690 Assembly seats but we are setting up 1620 such polling booths: CEC Sushil Chandra
EVMs and VVPATs will be utilized in all the polling stations. Election Commission has already made arrangments to ensure an adequate number of EVMs and VVPATs for the smooth conduct of elections.
It is mandatory for political parties to upload on their website detailed information regarding individuals with pending criminal cases selected as poll candidates. They will also have to give a reason to select the candidate
Model Code of Conduct (MCC) comes into effect immediately from announcement of the schedules. Election Commission has made elaborate arrangements for ensuring the effective implementation of the MCC guidelines. Any violation of these guidelines will be strictly dealt with.
Our cVIGIL application should be used by voters to report any incident of violation of the Model Code of Conduct, distribution of money freebies. Within 100 minutes of complaint, ECI officials will reach the place of offence
All election officials and employees will be considered as frontline workers and all eligible officers will be vaccinated with ‘precautionary dose’: CEC Sushil Chandra