DARJEELING,: About 3,600 people have applied for home voting in the Darjeeling Parliamentary constituency which has already started and will conclude on April 24, informed the district administration.
In case of home voting, the polling personnel visit the voter's residence and accept his/her votes in ballot papers with citizens aged 85 years and above and those with a minimum of 40 per cent disability eligible for this facility.
Addressing a press conference Monday, Darjeeling District Magistrate Priety Goyal said, “In the 7 Assembly Constituency (AC). 3,600 people had applied for home voting which will conclude on April 24 after which it will be counted as a postal ballot. Apart from that there are more than 11, 000 service voters for which electronic transmitted ballots have been issued and will be counted as postal ballots.”
In Darjeeling Parliamentary constituency, there are seven election constituencies with five of them falling in Darjeeling district and one in Uttar Dinajpur district which is Chopra and one in Kalimpong district.
This time round the number of total voters for this constituency stands at 17,65,744 - out of which 8, 84, 335 are male electors and 8, 81, 368 are female electors with 41 being third gender voters. According to the Darjeeling DM there will be 1999 polling stations in Darjeeling Parliamentary constituency.
“Everything is peaceful and there have been no reports of law and order problems. We hope to have a peaceful election. 100 per cent of the polling stations will be given coverage by the CAPF,” she said. She added that the CAPF deployed in Darjeeling district was 51 with 21 deployed in Siliguri and 51 in Islampur.
“The voting on April 26 will start from seven in the morning to six in the evening. Those who will be standing at 6 PM will be allowed to vote,” said Goyal, adding that 54 polling stations will be manned by female polling personnel.
According to Goyal, there are three polling stations where movement will happen on P-2 days which all fall under Darjeeling Assembly Constituency namely Daragaon Junior High School, Rammam Forest Primary School and Samanden Forest Primary School.
All these three booths fall in Darjeeling-Pulbazar block where the polling personnel will be moving there on April 24 itself with the other polling personnel are moving for their polling stations on April 25.
Speaking about the campaigning period, she said, “No campaigning will be allowed from April 26 at 6 pm along with all liquor shops also to be closed from that time till the conclusion of polls.”
Altogether this time 14 candidates are in the fray for the Darjeeling MP seat and counting of votes is scheduled on June 4.