5 months ago
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Alongside the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls which is progressing successful Kerala, preparations for the 2026 Assembly elections are gathering gait successful the caller year.
First-level checks connected the physics voting machines (EVM) person begun successful the State. On Saturday, Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala) Rathan U. Kelkar held a preliminary gathering with District Collectors and District Police Chiefs arsenic portion of the preparatory activities.
The first-level checks connected EVMs are being conducted successful the districts by engineers of Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL). Mr. Kelkar requested governmental parties to guarantee that their representatives are contiguous during the exercise.
Security aspects
“We volition present commencement making arrangements for the behaviour of the elections arsenic per the instructions of the Election Commission of India (EC). These see meetings connected security-related aspects with the constabulary and meetings with the Central forces. We request to formulate unit deployment plans and predetermination absorption plans,” helium said.
The EC had published the draught SIR electoral rolls connected December 23. The last rolls are scheduled to beryllium published connected February 21. Nevertheless, voters volition person the accidental to adhd their names to the rolls until the past day of nominations for the elections.
30,400 polling booths
For the 2026 elections, Kerala volition person a small implicit 30,400 polling stations. With the EC mounting 1,200 arsenic the bounds for voters per polling station, Mr. Kelkar’s bureau had fixed support for 5,030 caller stations. But the State whitethorn request lone 5,003 based connected inputs from the District Collectors, Mr. Kelkar said. At present, the EC has 25,468 polling stations successful Kerala.
The erstwhile Assembly predetermination successful Kerala was held connected April 6, 2021. In 2021, Kerala had 40,771 polling stations connected relationship of the EC determination to bounds the fig of voters to 1,000 per presumption to forestall overcrowding successful presumption of COVID-19. This determination had required Kerala to travel up with 15,730 auxiliary booths.
