A total of 66 polling centres have been identified as hyper sensitive plus in Ghaziabad, district election officials said on Wednesday, adding that the maximum security and surveillance will be given to such centres.
The district goes to polls on May 11, in the second phase of local body elections in the state.
Officials said 43.39% of the total 606 polling centres in Ghaziabad district have been categorised as “normal”, while the rest have been categorised under different categories of “sensitive”, the officials said.
According to the district election officials, there will be a total of 606 polling centres and 2,371 polling booths in the district for the nine local bodies, including the Ghaziabad municipal corporation.
“A total of 128 polling centres have been identified as “sensitive”, 149 as “hypersensitive” and 66 centres as “hypersensitive plus”. These centres, combined, have 1,373 polling booths. The sensitivity is based on different factors such as density of population or people voting largely in favour of a single candidate in past elections. The other factors also include incidents of crime or violence and even area having any one dominant community, etc.,” said Vipin Kumar, additional district magistrate and nodal officer for local bodies.
He said 66 hypersensitive plus polling centres will be monitored continuously.
“There will be sufficient police force deployment at sensitive centres and 66 of them will be monitored through webcasting. The webcasting feed will be available to district officials as well as state officials in Lucknow. The identification of sensitive centres is still going on and a final list will be released only before voting day so that voters do not feel any undue pressure or fear while exercising their franchise,” Kumar said.
The officials said a command and control room has come up at the district collectorate for monitoring of election activities.
Of the nine local bodies, the Ghaziabad municipal corporation has the of highest number of polling centres — 331 — having 1,264 polling booths. The corporation also has the highest number of residential wards (100 of 294) among all nine local bodies that go to poll on May 11.