With poll campaigning coming to end in Punjab today at 6:00 PM i.e. 48 hours before the completion of polling, the state is all set for smooth conduct of General Elections to Lok Sabha-2014. 1.95 crore voters of the state would decide the fate of 253 candidates representing various political parties in 13 Parliamentary Constituencies. Interacting with media persons here today, Mr. V.K. Singh, Chief Electoral Officer said that comprehensive arrangements have been made to ensure free, fair and transparent Lok Sabha Elections in the state in which around 1 lakh each civil as well as security officials would be on polling duty. He said that with active campaigning coming to end, the candidates or their supporters could go for door to door campaigning but they shouldn’t be more than 5 in numbers. He said that with the end of campaigning, the dry day has been started in the state and now the liquor vends of Haryana, Himachal Pardesh, Chandigarh, J&K and Rajasthan in 3kms radius of Punjab borders to remain shut till the end of polling on April 30.
He said that they have recommended the out of district transfers of three officials including ASI Pritam Singh, Chauki Incharge, Lopo, PS Badhani (Moga), Faljeet Singh, JE Powercom (Sangrur) and Mr. Malwinder Singh Mali, Teacher, GHS, Gardala (Roopnagar). Besides this, the suspension and charge sheet for major penalty for Mr. Balwant Singh, Assistant Engineer Drainage, Moga has been recommended for dereliction of election duty. He appealed the electors to participate in large numbers in election process by using their right to franchise to strengthen the institute of democracy. He also appealed the media to motivate more and more people for casting their votes. He said that the special emphasis was being given to 20 purely urban assembly constituencies, where the urban apathy of voters towards casting their votes was noticed during previous elections. He said that an SMS service was being launched there so that the voters could get an idea of queue length at a particular time.
The CEO said that keeping in view the possibility of heavy turnout in the state, the ECI has fixed 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM polling time on April 30 but he clarified that the 6:00 PM means any elector at that time standing in queue would get the right to poll his vote and there was no time limit for this. He appealed the candidates to ensure that their polling agents should reach polling stations in time on day of polling so that after mock polling, the regular polling could be started by the 7:00 AM.The CEO said that it was always a challenge for election staff on poll duty to get exercised their franchise and the ECI has issued elaborate instructions to facilitate the voting by this staff. He said that there were two options as the staff doing poll duty within same parliamentary constituency was given Election Duty Certificates while the staff outside the constituency could cast their votes through Postal Ballots. He said that the ongoing elections, approximately 33000 polling staff has been issued EDC and 6000 have been issued Postal Ballot. Similarly, approximately 12000 security personnel have been issued EDC and 1300 have been given postal ballots. The election staff including security personnel holding EDC shall be casting their vote at the polling station where they are on duty instead of the polling station where they are registered as voters. The polling staff who have EDCs has been instructed to cast ballot early in the day rather than postponing it in the day. Since police personnel are also staff on Election Duty and about 12000 of them have got the EDCs issued, there should not be any surprise how to find them voting in uniform on the day of poll, he added.