Over 27.1 million voters in Kerala will head to the polling booths on Thursday, capping a frenetic campaign by the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the state assembly elections.
The votes will be counted on May 4. The electorate comprises 13.2 million men, 13.9 million women, 273 transgenders and over 242,000 overseas voters across 140 constituencies.
Chief electoral officer, Rathan U Kelkar, said that all arrangements were in place to ensure a smooth and comfortable polling process. To ensure crowd management, each booth can accept only around 1200 votes, he added.
In addition, over 350 booths have been marked “pink” booths and will be managed by women. Of the total electorate, 460,000 are first-time voters. Kelkar said that 200 first-time voters would be offered “halwa” at select booths in each district after registering their vote, to encourage them to keep exercising their mandate.
146,000 trained polling staff and over 76,000 police personnel will take charge in the 30,471 polling booths across the state, said the CEO, adding that “critical” booths prone to violence would be prioritised for security.
Apart from state police personnel, 140 companies of central forces and 20 companies of police personnel from Tamil Nadu were also set to man the booths.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) deemed around 2040 stations as “critical” and prone to political clashes and communal flare-ups. Most of them fall in the northern districts. Kannur district has the highest with 771, followed by Kozhikode with 312, and Kasaragod with 238 stations.
