Deputy Commissioner-cum-District Election Officer Komal Mittal on Wednesday said that with the Election Commission's announcement of bypoll in Chabbewal assembly segment the model code of conduct has come into force with immediate effect in the constituency. In a media interaction here at DAC, Deputy Commissioner said that as per the schedule issued by the ECI, the voting is to be held on November 13 while the counting will be held on November 23.
She said that the District Administration had already initiated the preparations and arrangments so that free, fair and peaceful election could be conducted. Besides setting up a dedicated control room at District Administrative Complex, the Administration has also constituted different committees and monitoring teams, she added.
Giving information about the schedule, Komal Mittal said that the nomination process is to be started from October 18 while the last date of filing nomination is October 25. She said the scrutiny of papers would be held on October 28 whereas the date of withdrawl of papers is October 30.
The Additional Deputy Commissioner (G) Rahul Chaba is the Returning Officer for the bypoll and the nominations could be filed in his office at DAC from 11 am to 3:00 pm on stipulated days. She pointed out that there were total 205 polling stations in the constituency with a number of 159141 voters including 83544 male, 75593 female, four transgender, 21 NRI and 601 service voters.
The Administration has constituted nine flying squads, nine static surveillance teams and three video surveillance teams to ensure smooth and peaceful elections. The District Election Officer mentioned that there would be model polling booth, PWD managed and Women managed polliing booths to facilitate the voters.
The voters having 85 years or above age and those voters with 40 percent benchmark disablity could cast their votes from home. she said that there would be deployment of volunteers to help elderly and other needy voters with the facility of wheel chairs and transportation at polling booth as well as other requisite facilities including potable water, public conveniences, ramps and helpdesks.
Reffering to any sort of violation of MCC, the Deputy Commissioner said that in such cases people could report the violatio on C-Vigil app, which could be resolved within 100 minutes. She said that a control room with telephone number 01882-225013 had been setup in room number 235 at DAC to provide election related info besides that voters could also get the necessary info from the helpline 1950.
Constituted MCMC and other committees: Deputy Commmissioner said that the Media Certification & Monitoring Committee and other committees had been formed to provide the necessary permissions to political parties. She said that the a special cell had been setup in M.A. Branch (room number 210) to provide approvals for rallies, loud speakers and other poll activities.
Additional Deputy Commissioner (G) Rahul Chaba, SP Sarbjit Singh Bahia, Election Tehsildar Sarbjit Singh and other officials were also present. Holds meeting with political representatives, printers/publishers: Deputy Commissioner Komal Mittal also held separate meetings with the representatives of political parties and printers/publishers regarding adherence of model code of conduct (MCC) in letter and spirit.
She urged the representatives of political parties to ensure that the there should no violation of MCC. She also emphasised that there should no hate speeches during poll campaign so that the smooth and peaceful election process could be ensured.
Meanwhile, the printers and publishers have also been told to strictly comply with the directions of ECIs while printing election material by mentioning the name and address of the printers on the material.