M A I N   N E W S

29 Delhi booths hypersensitive

New Delhi, November 27
While political parties fight out the electoral battle to attain power, the Delhi Police has a challenge of ensuring peaceful and free polling next Monday for which the entire force would be out on the streets.

With 29 of the 2,377 polling stations at 70 constituencies having been declared hypersensitive and 207 sensitive, the police will be out in the maximum strength as orders have been issued to disallow and cancel leave to any cop till the poll process gets over.

Police Commissioner R.S. Gupta issued the orders after the Union Home Ministry sanctioned only 25 companies of Central paramilitary forces against the requirement of 40, police officials said today.

While sounding a general alert, the police has a challenge of ensuring security of highly-protected persons like Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, besides other political functionaries.

The security of the chief ministerial candidates of the Congress and the BJP — Ms Sheila Dikshit and Mr Madan Lal Khurana — has been upgraded.

JAIPUR: Nearly one-fourth of the total 35,705 polling stations have been declared sensitive or hypersensitive in Rajasthan.

According to the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, a maximum of 1,161 stations have been declared sensitive/ hypersensitive in the 15 constituencies of Jaipur district, followed by 540 in the 11 constituencies of Alwar district and 505 in the nine constituencies of Ajmer district.

In the seven constituencies of Chittorgarh district, 459 polling booths have been declared sensitive/ hypersensitive, while 426 are sensitive/ hypersensitive in the five constituencies of Jalore district.

An official spokesman said the number of sensitive/ hypersensitive stations had come down to 8,939 from 10,660 in the last poll because the number of polling stations had been reduced from 40,832 to 35,705.

BHOPAL: More than 28 per cent polling stations have been declared sensitive in Madhya Pradesh prompting the authorities to undertake elaborate security measures.

As many as 11,859 of the 42,267 stations for 230 Assembly seats have been identified as sensitive, Chief Electoral Officer D.S. Mathur said. The hypersensitive category has been merged with sensitive booths this time, he added.

Maximum number of 1,046 sensitive polling booths are in dacoity-prone Gwalior-Chambal divisions and Tikamgarh district followed by 769 in Naxalite-hit Balaghat district, while the minimum number of 54 sensitive booths are in Umariya district.

There are 49 sensitive booths in Assembly Speaker Srinivas Tiwari’s Mangawan constituency in Rewa district where large-scale irregularities in preparation of voters’ list had been alleged leading to deletion of over 21,000 names from the electoral roll. — PTI & UNI