Guwahati: The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar announced on January 13 that registered voters living in the villages along the contentious border with Assam are eligible to vote in the upcoming assembly elections in Meghalaya.
A two-day evaluation of Meghalaya’s election readiness was led by Kumar by an Election Commission of India (ECI) team. The visit concluded during the day.
“People living in villages along the disputed border can participate in the elections despite what has happened. Both sides have held joint meetings and discussions are taking place at the senior level as well. We are alive to the situation and there is nothing to worry about,” Kumar said. “There is no problem. We have reviewed the situation at our end and district officials from both sides have had detailed meetings,” he said.
According to the CEC, the commission has directed 16 government agencies to coordinate their efforts in areas where spending is a concern. In order to prevent any political party or candidate from trying to buy votes with money, he stated, “Agencies were urged to follow normal operating protocols in completing proper checks of flights and helicopters arriving to the state.” Political parties are required to announce cases still pending against candidates with criminal backgrounds and provide an explanation for why such individuals were nominated at least three times in local media and on local television. All necessary measures, according to Kumar, will be taken to guarantee a free, fair, and inclusive election process.
He said that 55 reserved seats for Scheduled Tribes and five unreserved constituencies are open to 21 lakh eligible voters in the state. The official estimated that there would be 3,482 voting places with 620 voters in each, adding that 120 booths would be run by female teams. There will be a total of 81,443 electors who are qualified to vote for the first time.
At least six people were killed in a bloody battle near the contentious border in November of last year, including five tribal tribesmen from Meghalaya and an Assam forest guard. The area where the violence occurred is one of 12 along the 884.9-km interstate border where Assam and Meghalaya have a protracted disagreement.
The two states had inked a memorandum of understanding in March of last year in order to resolve the disagreement in six of the sectors. Meghalaya has contested the 1971 Assam Reorganisation Act, which defined the boundary between the two states since being separated from Assam in 1972. The 60-member Meghalaya assembly is up for election this year.