112 polling stations flagged as ‘sensitive’

GANGTOK, 01 Nov: A total of 112 polling stations in the State have been declared as “sensitive” for the upcoming panchayat elections scheduled to take place on 03 November. This is out of a total of 759 polling booths where polling will be held.
South district also has 3 polling booths categorized as “hypersensitive”. These are at Yangyang Yabrung, Namthang and Suntaley.
The sensitive polling booths all over the state are identified as per certain factors. These include their past history of violence, number of candidates in the fray and the degree of political activity in the particular area.
It is normally the police agencies which assess the sensitivity level of a particular polling booth in an area before declaring it sensitive. Officials inform that all sensitive declared polling booths will have more number of security personnel. Besides each district also has armed police and IRBn personnel in the event of any law and order problem.
In the East district there are a total of 39 polling booths spread all over the district which have been declared sensitive out of a total of 260 polling stations here. As many as 1,300 personnel have been engaged for poll duty on polling day with another around 520 security personnel at the polling booths.
These include sector officers, sub sector officers, sector magistrates, sector police personnel and the armed police. There will also be a section of SAP in each sub division and reserve armed police personnel in each district as well. Apart from the poll parties engaged on election duty at the polling stations there will also be mobile patrolling of the polling booths by sector officers and sector police personnel.
West district has the highest number of sensitive booths at 49 out of a total of 275 polling stations. These are also spread over the district and most of these are located at the government schools were polling is scheduled to take place.
As per DC West, there are a total of 1,532 personnel engaged on poll duty apart from the security personnel. In South district there are as many as 19 polling booths identified as sensitive due to various degrees of violence recorded in past. This is out of a total of 179 polling stations in the district.
Some have been declared sensitive since the opposition political activity and presence there has been strong leading to apprehension of violence; some others have been identified due to active campaigning by Independent candidates. There are about 1,000 personnel engaged for polling duty in South district apart from another 450 security personnel.
The North district has the least number of polling stations at only 45; out of these a total of 5 have been identified as sensitive booths. Most of these sensitive booths fall under Phensang gram panchayat unit.
There are a total of 420 gram panchayat wards out of 987 going to polls on 03 November and another 70 zilla panchayat constituencies out of 108 all over the state.