With a spurt in political activity ahead of the Assembly elections in Haryana, the Panchkula administration has already started making the necessary arrangements.

While the Deputy Commissioner chaired a meeting with various political parties of the district on Monday, asking them to follow the code of conduct, the SDM today visited various sites in the city that have been identified by the Municipal Council as campaigning points.

“DC Pankaj Yadav has asked political parties to strictly follow the election code of conduct. Besides, we have also received as many as 16,000 to 20,000 fresh applications for the voter cards from Panchkula and Kalka. As many as 10,700 new voter cards have been made in a span of few days for Panchkula and 6,834 identity cards for Kalka,” said SDM Rajpal Singh.

It was added that those who are yet to get their voter cards made, can contact the SDM office in Panchkula and Kalka before September 25.

The SDM added, “While most of the polling booths will remain the same as they were during the Lok Sabha elections, a fresh list will be released soon. At present, there are around 139 polling booths in Panchkula and 171 in Kalka. To ease the heavy rush, there is also a proposal to set up auxiliary booths this time. This would mean that any booth with more than 1,200 voters registered under it would have an additional booth, in case of heavy rush, on polling day.”

The process of identifying sensitive booths and halls for counting votes is also on. “We have shortlisted two sites, including Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited (BHEL) for counting of votes from the Panchkula constituency and the community centre in Sector 20 for the Kalka constituency. The final approval is awaited,” said Singh.

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