All arrangements falling in place for smooth conduct of LS polls in Kerala

Thiruvananthapuram, April 25 (IANS) With the high voltage election campaigns by political parties over, Thursday saw election officials engaged in their work to ensure smooth polling on Friday for 20 Lok Sabha constituencies in Kerala.

Polling is expected to begin at 7 a.m on Friday and end at 6 p.m. In the fray are 194 candidates belonging to the three political fronts which includes the ruling CPI(M)-led Left, the Congress-led UDF and the BJP-led NDA besides a string of Independent candidates and a few other parties.

There are 2,77,49,159 voters in the state, including 1,43,33,499 women, 1,34,15,293 men and 367 transgenders.

There are 2,46,959 voters above the age of 85 and 2,891 who are aged 100 or above.

By now those aged above 85, who have asked for voting to be done at their homes and those who have applied for postal votes, have already cast their ballot.

There are 5,34,394 first-time voters besides 88,384 Non Resident Keralites.

In all, there will be 25,177 polling booths and 181 auxiliary booths and of these 2,776 will be model polling booths and 555 polling booths will be manned by all-women teams.

Youths will manage 100 booths while 10 will be managed by physically-challenged poll officials.

On Thursday morning, poll officials reached the reporting centres in each of the 14 districts of the state to collect the polling materials, after which they will be transported to various polling booths.

All the election officials will stay overnight at the respective polling booths.

A record number 41,976 Kerala Police officials will be overseeing the smooth conduct of the polls besides another 24,327 special police officials.

The Chief Election Officer has stocked adequate number of spare Electronic Voting Machines at the district headquarters besides 63,100 bottles of indelible ink will be used across the state. Each bottle contains 10 ml of ink and can be used for 700 voters.

The 2019 Lok Sabha polls saw a turnout of 77.67 per cent.