JOIN USOver 1.55 crore voters, including more than 71 lakh women, are eligible to cast vote for the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, state Chief Electoral Officer Shrikant Walgad said here on Wednesday.
As per the electoral rolls published on January 15, Haryana has a total voter strength of 1,55,94427, Walgad said.
The state has 16,129 polling stations, out of which 11,644 fall in rural areas while the rest are in urban areas. Details of sensitive and hyper-sensitive stations were being updated, he said.
Some of the polling stations will be Model Polling Stations, which will have facilities like ramps for the physically challenged persons.
Walgad told reporters that the poll body would seek 140 companies of para-military forces for smooth conduct of elections in Haryana. These will be in addition to the Haryana Police and Home Guard personnel who will be put on duty, he said. The Haryana CEO said 75,000 polling staff, including 1,300 supervisory officers, would be put on poll duty in the state, which will have a single-day polling on April 10.
Awareness drive
To encourage more and more women voters to excersise their franchise in Haryana, which is infamous for its skewed sex ratio, the Election Commission will conduct an awareness drive on March 8, which happens to be the International Women's Day.The drive will involve anganwadi centres. “Our purpose is to encourage more and more women to come out and cast vote,” he said.
A voter awareness programme will also be held in Gurgaon, Faridabad, Rohtak, Sonepat, Kurukshetra and Ambala districts, where various activities will be held at district level to encourage voters to cast ballot as the turnout in previous polls in these districts had been low in comparison to other areas of the state, the officer said.
To curb the paid news malaise, a monitoring committee will keep a strict vigil on both the print and electronic media, Walgad said. Of the 10 Lok Sabha seats, at present Congress has nine MPs while Haryana Janhit Congress has one MP from the Hisar constituency.