M A I N   N E W S

Shoot orders in Bihar

NEW DELHI, Feb 16 (PTI) — Amid shoot-at-sight order and threats of Naxalite violence, Bihar and Orissa go to polls tomorrrow for 108 and 70 Assembly constituencies respectively, with tight security measures in place.

Simultaneous polling will be held for by elections to Bellary and Kanauj parliamentary constituencies in Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh and 30 Assembly seats spread over 11 states.

In Bihar, where 21 persons including 12 security personnel were killed in landmine blasts and other poll-related violence during the first phase of polling for 108 seats, security forces have been put on high alert with shoot-at-sight order in view of the poll-boycott call by the ultra-Left outfits People’s War Group (PWG) and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC).

Over 30,000 central paramilitary forces, sniffer dogs, and landmine sweepers have been deployed to ensure peaceful polling, official sources said.

An electorate of two crore is to decide the fate of 1,318 contestants, prominent among them being RJD President Laloo Prasad Yadav, BPCC President Sadanand Singh and state ministers Abdul Mallick, Pratap Singh and Jaiprakash Yadav.

In Orissa inter-state borders have been sealed and nearly 10,000 security personnel from the CRPF and other states have been deployed with Naxals threatening violence for the first phase of polling for 70 of the 147 constituencies.

Other prominent candidates in the fray are Chief Minister Hemananda Biswal, 13 of his ministerial colleagues, state JD(U) president Narasingh Mishra and Opposition BJD leader Sachidananda Dalal.

State Director-General of Police K.A. Jacob told PTI in Patna that all police stations in the constituencies going to polls have been alerted and patrolling intensified.

Entry and exit points of all constituencies have been sealed to block entry of antisocials from other Assembly segments and strict vigil was being kept on the activities of the extremists, (DGP) Jacob said.

He said security measures have been tightened along areas bordering Bihar with Nepal to check entry of anti-socials in the state.

4,200 ‘bogus’ voters in Solan
From S.P. Sharma and Romesh Dutt
Tribune News Service

SOLAN, Feb 16 — The Congress and the BJP rebel candidate are keeping a watch on around 4200 “bogus” voters to prevent them from exercising their franchise in the byelection to the Solan Assembly seat tomorrow.

The Congress and BJP rebel Netar Singh have alleged that a large number of bogus voters were enrolled during the past few months and have alerted their polling agents against them.

However, Chief Electoral Officer Bhim Sein, denied the allegation. He told TNS that the Deputy Commissioner, Solan, who was asked to enquire into the complaint, had sent in his report today saying the allegation was incorrect.

He said that there was a minor error in lists with certain voters being attached to the list of some other polling booths.

A supporter of the BJP rebel, however, claimed that a panchayat pradhan of the Kandaghat area had identified several names in the voter list which were not of residents of the area.

Apprehending large scale rigging and casting of bogus votes, the Youth Congress is out verifying the names of registered voters in a door-to-door campaign.

Youth Congress unit president Sukhwinder Sukhu told newsmen that his men were finalising booth-wise lists of “bogus voters”, and would ensure that rigging and bogus voting did not take place. Any persons found casting bogus vote would be gheraoed in case the relevant complaint was ignored, he said.

BJP dissidents, who had offered to vote for the Congress in case they found their protegee, Independent candidate Netar Singh in a “not winning position”, are however how concentrating on winning over or neutralising active workers both in the rural and urban areas who had traditionally been entrusted to ensure that each BJP vote was cast.

With just hours to go all the three contenders are still out mending fences and repairing last-minute breaches.

The BJP-HVC alliance which is feeling insecure in the Kandaghat-Jhaja belt of the constituency, considered a stronghold of the Sofat faction, has held four closed-door meetings between the Chief Minister and influential voters.

The opposition in turn is convincing the people that Mr Dhumal has been displaying autocratic tendencies, with no respect for grassroot workers. They cited the example of denial of the ticket to Mr M.N. Sofat and bringing of Kandaghat under the notified area committee against the wishes of the majority of its residents.

A notified area committee was imposed on Kandaghat despite the local panchayat, the block samiti and zila parishad passing unanimous resolutions opposing the move on grounds that Kandaghat was primarily a rural locality. It was then alleged that the Chief Minister had chosen to ignore the sentiments of the democratically elected panchayati raj institutions to please a few of his henchmen. The Congress’s local campaigner, Ms Asha Kumari has tried to derive maximum mileage from the issue.

Around 800 Scheduled Caste families, who were given lands on lease by the previous government, have been demanding full rights over the land allotted for quite some time. The Dhumal Government, though seized of the matter, has failed to come out with an announcement in this regard.