Voting begins peacefully in Nagaland

Kohima, April 9 (IANS) Voting for the lone Lok Sabha seat in Nagaland began Wednesday for the second phase of India's general elections, official said.

The Lok Sabha election for the Nagaland parliamentary seat will be webcast to keep a tab on the voting process in 84 polling centres. This is the first election in India's northeastern states to be webcasted.

"Voting has started in all the 2,059 polling booths across Nagaland. We expect large number of people would turn out to exercise their franchise to elect the new Lok Sabha member," Chief Electoral Officer Sentiyanger Imchen told IANS.

Altogether, 11,77,572 electors are eligible to exercise their franchise to elect one of the three candidates.

Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio pitted against Congress candidate K.V. Pusa. Rio's Naga People's Front is a member of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Among the three candidates testing the electoral waters, Akhei Achumi is contesting on the Socialist Party (India) ticket.

Imchen said the Election Commission has decided on live webcast of the Lok Sabha election in 84 polling booths to ensure free and fair balloting across the state.

The webcast facility will be deployed in 21 polling booths in Nagaland capital Kohima, 20 in Dimapur, the main commercial hub of the state, and the remaining in 10 other districts.

Imchen said the idea behind webcasting the polling process was to prevent illegal activities such as booth capturing and bogus voting.

He said the webcast facility will provide live feed from polling booths to the Election Commission, state chief electoral officer and the district election officers concerned.

Moreover, the recording would be closely monitored in the control room in each district.

"Teams would be deputed in these offices to monitor the feed received from the polling booths. In case any irregularity is found from the feed, field officials would immediately be directed to take corrective steps," Imchen said.

Over 14,000 security personnel have been put into service to ensure smooth polling in the 2,059 polling booths. The election commission has declared 1,536 polling booths as normal, 429 as vulnerable and 94 as critical.