Raipur: The first phase of the three-tier panchayat elections will take place on Monday in 53 blocks of Chhattisgarh. The State Election Commission (SEC) has made elaborate security arrangements for peaceful voting with additional security at the sensitive and highly sensitive booths.
The Naxal-infested Dantewada got a special focus. Mithilesh Kisan, an electoral official said 87 polling parties of Dantewada Block and 111 polling parties of Geedam Block have been dispatched to their respective booths with voting instruments.
"For panchayat elections, search has been intensified in all four blocks of the district for peaceful voting. For security reasons, Danteshwari Mahila Commando Team has been deployed along with DRG, CORP and police," SP Gaurav Rai said.
Preparations in the Sonhat Janpad Panchayat in the Korea district are over. 90 polling booths have been set up and collector Chandan Tripathi flagged off the polling parties from Swami Atmanand English Medium School. The 42 gram panchayats in Sonhat have 477 wards out of which 216 Sarpanchs have been elected unopposed. Of the remaining 261 panchayats, 610 candidates are in the fray. Two gram panchayats have one candidate each and a total of 198 candidates are in the fray for sarpanch.
Polling parties for the first phase of elections have reached Kusmi and Shankargarh in Balrampur. The returning officer instructed the polling officials to function fairly. A total of 489 polling stations have been set up, including 197 in Rajpur, 136 in Shankargarh and 156 in Kusmi.
Durg collector Richa Prakash Chaudhary said the number of panchayats is 73, wards is 1,315 and janpad panchayat is 24. The number of Zilla Panchayat members is four and the total number of polling stations is 257 with 1,62,831 electors.
According to the State Election Commission, voting will be held for 433 posts of Zilla Panchayat, 2,973 posts of Janpad Panchayat, 11,672 posts of gram panchayat (Sarpanch) and 1,60,180 posts of Ward (Panch) for all three phases. A total of 1,58,12,580 electors will exercise their franchise in 31,041 polling stations, out of which 7,128 have been marked as sensitive and 2,161 are highly sensitive.
The voters choose the Sarpanch, Panch, Janpad Panchayat and District Panchayat members directly. This time too, the SEC has made preparations to ensure zero malpractice.
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