Nearly 50,000 security personnel, apart from 161 flying squads of police and video surveillance teams will be deployed as part of elaborate preparations to ensure fair and peaceful polls to seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi on April 10 in which 1.27 crore people are eligible to vote.
A total of 150 candidates are in the fray and polling will be held from 7 AM to 6 PM. The electorate include over 3.37 lakh first time voters. Election Commission has this time done away with provision of voter cards and voter slips being mandatory to cast vote.
Encouraged by the "historic" turnout in the recent Delhi assembly election, Delhi's Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Dev on Tuesday said he was hopeful of even better polling percentage in this election and appealed to Delhi residents to come out and vote.
"We have completed all the preparations to conduct free and fair election on April 10. This time around polling hours have been increased by two hours and it will be conducted from 7 AM to 6 PM," Dev said at a press conference.
Polling will be held in 11,763 polling stations out of which 327 have been declared critical and 90 hyper critical. For the first time, Delhi residents will be able to exercise their franchise even if they do not have Electors Photo identity Card (voter card), but have their names registered in the electoral roll.
"Besides EPIC, as many as 11 other photo identity documents including passport, driving license, service identity card issued by Central and state governments, PAN card, Aadhar card, Smart card issued by RGI under NPR, health insurance smart card issued by Ministry of Labour, MNREGA job card, pension document with photograph and authenticated photo voter slip issued by the election can be used by voters to establish their identity and cast their votes," said Dev.
He added that this provision was not there during last time and voter cards and voter slips were mandatory to cast vote.
"Voters can check whether their names are registered in electoral roll or not through our website or by sending an SMS to designated numbers. Those who have applied for the voter card, but have not received it so far can also use those 11 documents," Dev added.
In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the overall voting percentage stood at 52.3 per cent, which increased to 66 per cent in the 2013 Delhi assembly election.
Dev said 35,000 personnel of Delhi police, 4000 home guards and 40 companies of central paramilitary forces have been deployed to conduct peaceful elections.
Apart from that, 161 flying squads of Delhi police, static surveillance teams and video surveillance teams are active.
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