16th Loksabha Election in Kalimpong

Female polling personnel conducting poll in a polling station

in Kalimpong

KalimNews, Kalimpong, 17 April 2014: The most crucial and unpredictable 17th Loksabha election of the Darjeeling constituency ended peacefully with 41 companies of the central armed forces for security. The three international borders were also sealed.

It already had 9 companies for the internal security and 32 were deployed for election process. They comprised of state police, SSB and paramilitary forces. 

In almost all the constituencies the poll percentage was encouraging. Till 3 pm it was 56.5 percent in Kalimpong Assembly Constituency, 58.6 in Kurseong, 65,6 in Darjeeling and 72 percent in Siliguri. 

Out of the 1829 polling stations of the Darjeeling constituency 1633 are under the six segments in Darjeeling district (Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong, Matigara-Naxalbari, Siliguri and Phansidewa) and 196 are in Chopra.

The polling station having the lowest number of voters is the SSK Duday Barakothi polling station in the Kurseong segment (129), while the No 1 polling station at Rangia junior basic school has the highest number of voters (1345). The farthest polling station is the Tangta primary school under the Kalimpong segment (142 km) , while the Srikhola primary school is the highest polling station in the Darjeeling segment. 

Out of the 14,15,168 voters the six assembly segments of Darjeeling district have a total of 1221571 voters. 

The Chopra segment has 193597 voters while the the three hill constituencies have 6,11,665 voters. 

Election procedures in all the sensitive and hypersensitive polling stations ended peacefully. 302 polling stations of the 868 in the hills were identified as hyper sensitive and out of 765 polling stations under the Siliguri Metropolitan Police 129 are hyper sensitive. Out of 196 polling stations of Chopra 144 are identified as hyper-sensitive. Out of 261 polling stations of Kalimpong constituency only 2 were identified as highly sensitive and 39 were identified as sensitive stations. Except a few untoward incident the overall situation was peaceful. In some booths miscreants tried to disturb the poll procedure but timely intervention of the police controlled the situation.

Only in one booth the election procedure started at 8.30 am while in others the exact time frame was observed .