Delhi polls: 346 booths hypersensitive; 1218 sensitive

New Delhi, Nov 21 (UNI) The Delhi Chief Electoral Office has identified 346 polling stations as hypersensitive and 1218 others as sensitive for the November 29 Assembly elections in Delhi.

Announcing this at a press conference today, Chief Electoral Officer Satbir Silas Bedi said after holding a meeting with police officials and Deputy Commissioner, the hypersensitive and sensitive ones were identified out of a total of 11,044 booths.

She said while Seemapuri Assembly seat has the maximum of 30 hypersensitive booths, the Okhla constituency has the highest number of 92 sensitive booths.

She said the criteria while deciding the hypersensitive and sensitive booths included the number of electoral rolls without photos, the number of instances of violation of the Model Code of Conduct, law and order, border areas and where booths are in far-flung areas.

She informed that 1738 booths would have two balloting machines as on those seats, more than 16 candidates would be testing electoral waters.

A single electronic voting machine has the name of 16 candidates and those seats where more than 16 candidates are crossing swords will have two balloting machines.

As Braille was being used for the first time in the Delhi Assembly elections, every EVM would have a Braille language strip, she added.

Ballot papers have been prepared with the details of names of candidates, party names and their serial numbers in the Braille language. This way, they, for the first time, will be able to cast a secret vote.

Earlier, blind voters used to take adult people along with them to exercise their franchise, a practice over which some serious doubts were raised in different quarters.

UNI MMG/RL AE RN1925