2 phase poll, 3 phase repoll in Chhattisgarh assembly election

     Raipur, November 26, 2008: Creating a history, Chhattisgarh is all set to go for three phase repoll when due to high presence of Maoists in the state, the Election Commission had conducted two-phase assembly election on November 14 and 20.

     The Election Commission had identified 1625 sensitive booths and 288 hyper sensitive booths, which are mainly located in naxal affected areas of Kawardha, Rajnandgaon, Durg, Narayanpur, Kanker, Bastar, Dantewada and Bijapur districts, for conducting poll on November 14, on the first phase of election in 39 constituencies.

      For the second and last phase of election 51 seats went to poll on November 20, in which 2608 booths were identified as sensitive and 355 as hyper sensitive. Maoists have a presence in Raipur, Sarguja, Jashpur and Korea districts.

      Despite deployment of 1.25 lakh security personnel during poll the Maoists had able to create a fear in the heart and mind of the people and the polling parties and as a result in many places the polling parties had never turned up and cast false votes of the booth in safer places without conducting polls in designated booths.

     It was really a shameful thing. The villagers were ready to participate in the election but the Election Commission had failed to send its team to the booths.

     Due to such and many other poll related irregularities the Commission had conducted re-polling in 33 places on Monday, which went to poll on first phase and 16 places of the second phase the repolling were held yesterday.

     However, reports reaching the Election Commission suggested that in Gogunda booth of Konta segment of Dantewada district and Jhakhadi, Bhungapal and Pharasgaon kasai of Keshkal constituency of Bastar district due to poll irregularities re-polling could be ordered for the four booths.

     With those four booths, the state went for two phase election and three phase re-polling for the state assembly votes.