Chief Electoral Officer Lawmkunga confident of peaceful polls in Manipur

Imphal, Jan 27 (ANI): The Additional Chief Secretary (Election) and Chief Electoral Officer of Manipur, P.C. Lawmkunga, on Friday said preparations are complete for assembly elections, and expressed confidence that the polls would be conducted in a peaceful manner across the state.

"Now, our preparation for elections is in full circle. All our polling parties have started towards their destination and the total report I will receive by 3:00 p.m. today," Lawmkunga told reporters here.

"We have this software for poll day monitoring system. So, regarding the law and order situation as a whole, we have not encountered any serious law and order problem now," he added.

Lawmkunga said personnel of the Assam Rifles and paramilitary forces have been deployed in order to avoid any untoward incident from taking place.

"So, we have made further stringent security deployment with the help of Assam Rifles and other paramilitary forces.... The CPM have 350 companies have been inducted, not for area domination, it's only for the main polling stations," said Lawmkunga.

"So, the remaining polling stations would be taken care of by Assam Rifles and other paramilitary forces and even army has been requested to dominate the areas especially in Khoupum areas and others. So, our position is as of now till this hour is quite good and is under control," he added.

Lawmkunga further expressed confidence that the elections would be completed on time and the results would be declared as per the schedule.

"Elections as a whole will be completed in full and will be able to have the result on time and counting on time and the constitution of assembly on time," he said.

The elections in Manipur would be held on January 28. The elections would be held at 2,357 polling booths and 875 of them have been termed as hyper sensitive.

Meanwhile, 1325 of them are sensitive and the remaining 160 are normal.

It is among one of the five states, where assembly polls are scheduled to take place between January 28 and March 3.

The other states, where elections would take place, are Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Punjab.

The result of the polls would be declared on March 6. (ANI)