In South Goa, 21 polling booths ‘critical’: Collector

MARGAO: While no polling booth in South Goa has been identified as ‘sensitive’, seven have been categorized as ‘vulnerable’ and 21 as ‘critical’, based on previous polling figures.
Critical polling stations are those where 75% of votes go in favour of a particular candidate, South Goa collector Ajit Roy said on Thursday, adding that a micro observer will be seated inside the polling booth and the entire polling process will be filmed.
Roy briefed reporters on the measures put in place to ensure free and fair elections for the Lok Sabha polls as well as the byelection for Shiroda. He said there will be 810 polling booths for 5.78 lakh registered voters in South Goa.
For the elections, 5,244 personnel have been requisitioned from the state and central governments.
While 2,100 Goa Police personnel will be deployed, the South Goa administration has requisitioned 5-6 companies of Central Armed Police Force.
At the end of the last day for filing nominations for the Lok Sabha polls, altogether eight candidates filed their papers, of which two are substitute candidates for the South Goa parliamentary polls.
Fransisco Sardinha of Congress, Narendra Sawaikar of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Elvis Gomes of Aam Admi Party (AAP), Kalidas Vaingankar of the Niz Goenkar Revolution Front, Rakhi Naik of Shiv Sena and independent Mayur Khanconkar are the main candidates in the fray.
Roy added that of the eight complaints received on the Election Commission’s C-Vigil app, five have been disposed of and one is under investigation.