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The Election Commission of India (ECI) has permitted Goa Chief Electoral Officer to increase the number of polling booths for the Assembly elections scheduled to be held early next year.
The Chief Electoral Officer Mr Gonesh Koyu said the State will have 274 additional polling booths taking the total number of booths from 1,338 to 1612. “The number of booths would be increased for voters' convenience. Voters should not be made to stand in long queues. There should be one polling booth within a radius of two kilometre,” he said.
The Chief Electoral Officer has also prepared a list of hypersensitive and sensitive polling booths after getting feedback from police stations.
“There are 72 hyper-sensitive and 168 sensitive booths, which would be kept under special surveillance during the polls,” he said.
Mr Koyu stated that electors photo identity card coverage has touched 96 per cent mark in the state and attempts were being made to have 100 per cent coverage before the polls.
The ECI has also decided to allot voting slips itself instead of letting political parties do it.
Mr Koyu said political parties can give voters slip but it should not carry the party symbol on it.
The Election Commission is planning to organise street plays and holding awareness camps to encourage young voters to get themselves enrolled in the voting list in Goa, a senior official said today.
Mr Koyu told reporters today that the target is to enrol 40,000 youth, who are eligible to be voters, but have not got included themselves in the list.
“There are 20,000 youths who did not become part of electoral list during last revision and fresh 20,000 youths have become eligible voter from this year,” Mr Koyu said banking on the data statistics available from Census Operations.
He said that they have planned mass media campaigns like street plays, hoardings, announcements through radio stations, awareness through NSS volunteers and other central government backed agencies besides taking help from educational institutions across the state to ‘educate the young voters about their right.'
“Booth level officers will be visiting house to house and find out number of eligible voters and even missing voters or those voters who have shifted from their places,” Mr Koyu said.
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