Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Nov 5: In order to ensure that inclement weather conditions do not deprive electorates of high altitude areas of their right to franchise, the District Election Officers (DEOs) of 11 districts have formulated Contingency Plans whereby polling material and manpower would be airlifted to 409 Polling Stations.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that as part of its strategy to facilitate each and every voter to cast vote without any difficulty during the forthcoming elections to State Legislative Assembly, the Election Commission of India in the recent past had directed for timely formulation of Contingency Plans by the concerned District Election Officers of Jammu and Kashmir.
In this directive, the Election Commission laid major thrust on those areas, which get disconnected with rest of their respective district headquarters due to inclement weather conditions and may deprive the electorates of their right to exercise franchise.
Accordingly, the District Election Officers of Leh, Kargil, Bandipore, Baramulla, Shopian, Reasi, Kathua, Ramban, Doda, Kishtwar and Kupwara set into motion the exercise to prepare Contingency Plans after analyzing the past weather conditions in the Assembly constituencies in their respective districts.
It has come to the fore that around 2.87 lakh electorates in 15 Assembly constituencies falling in 11 districts of Jammu and Kashmir are residing in those areas where inclement weather conditions may create difficulties in timely stationing of manpower and taking polling material during the forthcoming Assembly elections.
Through their respective Contingency Plans, these District Election Officers have projected that 409 Polling Stations in 15 Assembly constituencies, which include Leh, Nubra, Zanskar, Kargil, Gurez, Uri, Inderwal, Kishtwar, Doda, Gool-Arnas, Karnah and Bani etc may require airlifting of polling material and manpower in view of inclement weather conditions, sources informed.
Among these 409 polling stations, 44 are in Bandipore district, 32 in Baramulla, 12 in Shopian, 10 in Reasi, 24 in Kathua, 10 in Ramban, 14 in Doda, 52 in Kishtwar, 13 in Kupwara, 84 in Leh district and 112 in Kargil.
These Contingency Plans would now be discussed with the Indian Air Force (IAF) by the Divisional Commissioners of Kashmir and Jammu very shortly in order to sound the IAF authorities about the requirement of air sorties, sources said while disclosing that generally MI-17 helicopters are used for airlifting of men and material for polling purpose and if the need arises the IAF would press into service even bigger aircrafts.
In response to a question, they said that mentioning names of 409 Polling Stations in the Contingency Plans does not mean that airlifting would be required for all these stations. “The airlifting for these Polling Stations would be decided keeping in view the prevailing weather conditions on the scheduled date for deployment of polling staff”, sources further said.
“Basically, the Election Commission of India wants preparedness by keeping in view all the aspects so that none of the electorate is deprived of right to vote”, they said, adding “besides polling staff even security forces personnel are also airlifted for many polling stations and provision of the same is also kept while deciding the number of sorties”.
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