Neeraj Rohmetra
Jammu, July 21: Armed with feedback from all the district headquarters, senior officials of the Elections Commission of India (ECI), who visited the State few days back, have submitted their Initial Assessment Report pertaining to the forthcoming Assembly elections to the Chief Election Commissioner, V S Sampath.
“After Jammu and Kashmir, the delegation will also be visiting three other States – Jharkhand, Haryana and Maharashtra, which are likely to go to polls along with this border State to review poll-preparedness”, official sources pointed out.
Sources told, “the team of the ECI lead by Deputy Election Commission had held detailed interaction with all the 22 District Election Officers and SPs through video conferencing on July 16. The officials had appraised the high-level delegation about the preparedness for holding of the forthcoming elections in November-December this year”, adding, “the marathon meeting, which started at 2.30 pm ended at 6 pm and the officials also updated the team about the status of the on-going summary revision of electoral rolls”.
“The draft of electoral rolls has also been placed in public domain and is available on the official website of State Electoral Department. Besides, the copy of the rolls has been placed at all district headquarters, tehsils and polling booth for public scrutiny”, sources remarked, adding, “the final electoral rolls shall be published on October 1”.
Elaborating further, sources said, “on July 17, the Deputy Election Commissioner held deliberations with the Chief Electoral Officer, Home Secretary, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order) and other State Police officials to work-out a security deployment plan for the forthcoming Assembly polls”.
Sources emphasised, “based on the experience gained from the recently conducted Lok Sabha polls, the State electoral machinery is being geared up to meet all requirements of the Assembly polls. Top Security officials also provided feedback on their assessment of the situation and strength of forces required to ensure violence-free polls”.
Confirming the detailed discussion, Principal Secretary Home, Suresh Kumar said, “we discussed all the security arrangement required for smooth conduct of Assembly polls and few other meetings are also lined up in near future to prepare a detailed strategy”, adding, “we have also projected our security requirements for the forthcoming elections”.
While in the Parliamentary polls, there were six Returning Officials (ROs) for the six seats, this time the Election Department would appoint 87 ROs to cover the entire State.
“The ECI panel was also apprised with the district-wise status of the electoral rolls, status of health of electoral rolls as per expected draft publication roll including EP ratio and gender ration. The meeting, while discussing the summary revision took up issues pertaining to training of EROs, AEROs and BLOs, appointment of BLAs by the political parties, online registration facility, special strategy for locating missing voters and registration of voters eligible to enrol.”, sources said. The meeting also discussed issues pertaining to the increase in number of polling stations, additional requirement of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and the required security arrangements.
Sources stated that though the election dates have to be announced by the ECI in consultation with the CEO of the State, there were enough indications that Assembly election in the state would be held in November-December.
“Going by the preparations like revision of electoral rolls, weather scheduled, other arrangements etc., there were indications that Assembly elections would start somewhere in the first week of November and the Commission would like to complete them before December end, when extreme cold conditions would set in. However, the election process can even be extended till second week of January next year as the new Assembly had to be constituted before January 19,” official sources said.
Officials pointed out that under Jammu and Kashmir laws, there were four qualifying dates for summary revision of electoral rolls including January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1. As the elections here were due in November-December, the Election Commission has fixed October 1 as qualifying date for enrollment of new voters, who would turn 18 on October 1, 2014. This is for the first time that October 1 has been fixed as qualifying date for enrollment of voters. In 2008 elections, January 1, 2008 had been taken as qualifying date for the elections.
They added that there had to be a gap of 15 to 20 days in announcement of election schedule and issuance of notification for first phase of the elections.
Asked about the next proposed meeting of the ECI team, sources said, “the next visit most likely would be by the full Election Commission for final assessment of the entire situation”.
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