(Vehicles lined up for election duty in Kohima)
As campaigning ends in Nagaland all eyes are set on the polling day 27th Feb. Stakes are high for the ruling NPF and the NDPP-BJP alliance which will see former chief ministers TR Zeliang and Neiphiu Rio pitted against each other. The results will be declared on March 3 along with that of Tripura and Meghalaya.
Over 15,000 government employees will be on poll duty and there will be 177 all-women polling stations across 25 constituencies in the state.
A total of 11,70,548 voters will vote on February 27 in 59 constituencies. Actually 11,91,513 voters were supposed to go to polls. However, with Northern Angami-II being declared unopposed, 20,965 electorates from the seat have been omitted.
For the February 27 polls there will be 5,91,440 male and 5,79,108 female voters.
86 first timers will be hoping to find a place in the 14th Nagaland Legislative Assembly.
1100 critical polling stations
Since November, polling stations have been classified in three categories- Critical, vulnerable and normal, where in the last election if voting was more than 75% or a candidate got 75% of the votes or places with complaints or booth capturing falls under critical category, cases with threat of intimation to voters or element of violence falls under vulnerable category and others are placed in normal category. Presently there are 1100 critical, 530 vulnerable and 566 normal polling stations which were classified by DCs, SPs and respective administrative officers.
Elaborate security arrangement
The election commission is taking no chances when it comes to security. On security arrangements, The Chief Electoral Officer Nagaland said about 280 companies of central armed police forces (CAPF) will be deployed to the state to supplement the state forces. Forty-five CAPF companies are expected to be in the state while the remaining will arrive after the completion of Tripura polls. Besides this, three flying squads for each constituencies have already been activated and static check posts are operational, the CEO informed. He added that arrangements have been made for real time webcasting in about 555 polling stations out of 2194 stations across the state. Others will be covered with fixed camera videography.