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Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday organized a meeting for observers, who will be deployed for the upcoming Assembly elections of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa.
The ECI had announced the schedule for the five poll-bound states on January 8. Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa will be held between February 10 and March 7. The counting of votes will be held on March 10. Officers from IAS, IPS, IRS and other Central Services have been included to be deployed as General, Police and Expenditure Observers. Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra, Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar and Anup Chandra Pandey briefed the observers. As per electoral roll data with regard to January 1 as the qualifying date, the total number of electors in the state of Goa, Manipur, Punjab Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh are 18.35 crore electors with a total of 215,368 polling stations. Observers were briefed about their responsibilities to ensure proper direction to field-level officers so that ECI's constitutional mandate is scrupulously fulfilled. The half-day long briefing sessions will also have a comprehensive briefing by the Secretary-General ECI Umesh Sinha on Election Planning, Security Management and SVEEP aspects. Briefing sessions were held on the training of personnel and inputs, electoral roll issues and IT applications and EVM VVPAT Management System, legal issues, MCC and expenditure monitoring etc. All eyes of political parties are on meeting Election Commission meeting tomorrow where it will review the COVID-19 situation in poll blind states and take the decision on its earlier decision of Virtual rallies by political parties. Election Commission had announced that no roadshow, pad-yatra, cycle/bike/vehicle rally and procession shall be allowed till January 15. The commission shall subsequently review the situation and issue further instructions accordingly. (ANI)
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