First phase of voting on Friday, all preparations of the Commission completed

New Delhi, April 18 (Hindustan Reporter) Voting for the Lok Sabha elections will be held on Friday for 102 parliamentary constituencies of 21 states and union territories and 92 assembly constituencies of Arunachal and Sikkim. The Election Commission has completed all preparations for the first phase of voting. Voting will start from 7 am in the morning and continue till 6 pm in most places.

Of the 102 Lok Sabha seats, 73 are reserved for general, 11 for scheduled tribes and 18 for scheduled castes. There are 16.63 crore voters in this phase and for them, 1.87 lakh polling stations have been set up by the Commission and 18 lakh polling officers have been deployed. In this phase, 1625 candidates are in the electoral fray. Of these, 1491 are men and 134 are women.

The number of voters is 16.63 crore. There are 8.4 crore men, 8.23 ​​crore women and 11371 transgenders. 35.67 lakh voters will exercise their franchise for the first time. Apart from this, there are 3.51 crore youth voters, whose age is 20 to 29 years. There are 14.14 lakh voters above 85 years of age in this phase. There are 13.89 lakh disabled voters.

The Election Commission has completed all preparations to conduct smooth, free and fair elections. Adequate number of security forces have been deployed. 41 helicopters, 84 special trains and about one lakh four-wheelers have been deployed by the Commission. Who will ensure the movement of officers and security personnel at the polling stations.

According to the Commission, web casting will be done in about 50 percent of the polling stations. 661 observers will be deployed. Of these, there are 127 general observers, 67 police observers and 167 expenditure observers. They will play the role of eyes, ears and nose of the Election Commission. 1375 check posts have been made on the interstate borders and 162 check posts on the international border, so that there is no movement of illegal materials.

In the first phase, all two seats of Arunachal Pradesh, 14 of Assam, four of Bihar, 11 of Chhattisgarh, six of Madhya Pradesh, five of Maharashtra, two of Manipur, all two seats of Meghalaya, one of Mizoram, one of Sikkim are up for election for Lok Sabha. , one seat from Nagaland, 12 from Rajasthan, all 39 from Tamil Nadu, one seat from Tripura, eight from Uttar Pradesh, one from Lakshadweep, one from Puducherry, all five from Uttarakhand, three from West Bengal, one from Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Voting will be held on one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.