Ranchi, 16 October (HS). Chief Electoral Officer K. Ravi Kumar has said that the officials engaged in assembly election work will be able to provide equal opportunities to all the candidates by following the instructions of the Election Commission of India. He said that the Election Commission of India has directed to pay special attention to the four M's (Money Power, Muscle Power, Misinformation and MCC). By paying special attention to PVTG, senior voters and disabled voters, arrangements for easy voting have to be made for them.
After the announcement of Assembly elections 2024 on Wednesday, Kumar was holding a meeting with all the district officials through online medium from Nirvachan Sadan.
The Chief Electoral Officer directed to ensure availability of minimum facilities at all polling stations. While inspecting the polling stations, ensure that there is arrangement for electricity and lighting there. Prepare a sweep calendar and give wide publicity for ethical voting among the voters. He said that the reasons for low voting percentage should be reviewed in all polling stations and measures should be taken to resolve them. Run a special campaign to motivate voters in urban areas to vote.
He said that four polling officers along with the presiding officer are to be appointed at polling stations with more than 1200 voters. For this, mark the officials in advance and prepare a list of them. He said that in this election, in order to speed up the voting process at the polling stations, training on Voter Turnout Management System has been given to all the officials, following which the voting has to be conducted smoothly.
On this occasion, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Dr. Neha Arora gave detailed information to all the officials through PPT about what to do within the first 72 hours of implementation of the Model Code of Conduct. He shared information with the officials related to advertisements, utilization of government resources, election expenditure, compliance with FST, SST, VVT, surveillance team etc.
On this occasion, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Sandeep Singh, Joint Chief Electoral Officer Subodh Kumar, OSD Geeta Choubey, Assistant Chief Electoral Officer Dev Das Dutta and Deputy Commissioners of all the districts were present through online medium.