ECI Impact: Liquor, narcotics and cash worth over Rs 118.65 crore black money seized in Odisha

By C.R.Beura

Bhubaneswar, April 18: As Odisha prepares for the forthcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, black money and liquor mafia traffickers have started to become active. However, proactive actions by the Election Commission of India and law enforcing authorities have thwarted their operations to a great extent.

Till Thursday, a total of Rs 118.65 crore has been seized by state police, excise officials and state GST sleuths from such people. This was informed by Odisha’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Nikunja Dhal here on Thursday.

“Liquor amounting Rs 18.19 crore, drugs and narcotics amounting Rs 43.69 crore and precious metals including gold amounting Rs 7.17 crore,  and other materials amounting Rs 47. 44 crore have been seized so far. The ECI is constantly on vigil on such nefarious activities to ensure free and fair elections,” Dhal added.

In Odisha, polling will be held in Kalahandi, Nabarangpur, Koraput and Berhampur parliamentary constituencies in the fourth phase of general elections on May 13.  Besides, 28 assembly seats of the Lok Sabha constituencies will also go to the polls on the very day.

The filing of nominations for the May 13 polls began on Thursday with some candidates filing their nominations.

The last date for filing nominations is April 25. While the nomination papers will be scrutinized on April 26, candidates can withdraw their nomination papers till April 29, informed Dhal.

The Odisha CEO also said that the number of female voters in the poll bound four LS seats are more than the male voters.

 “Out of the total 62, 84, 649 electors in the four LS seats, the number of female voters is 31, 87, 771, and the number of male voters is 30, 96, 243. The number of transgender voters is 635. The gender ratio in these four parliamentary constituencies is 999 female voters per 1,000 male voters. In Nabarangpur, it is 1,039 per one thousand male voters while it is 996 in Berhampur and 1,095 in Koraput,” said Dhal.

“As many as 2.78 per cent and 23.34 per cent of voters of the four seats are under 18-19 and 20-29 years age group, respectively. Polling will take place in as many as 7, 289 stations across the four seats. As many as 14 auxiliary polling stations have also been set up at different places where more than 1500 voters are available to cast their votes,” he further said.

“We have a total of 3.66 crore electors in Odisha. Among those, there are 1.70 crore male voters and 1.66 lakh female voters. The gender ratio of the State voters is 974 male voters per 1000 female voters. There are 8.69 lakh voters under 18-19 years of age in Odisha. We have 1.56 PWD voters in the State. As many as 70.40 lakh voters under 20-29 years of age will exercise their franchise this time. Their number is around 21 per cent of the total voters,” he informed.

According to Dhal, the EC has so far received 3,873 complaints through C-Vigil app for the model code of conduct violation and among those, 3,854 cases have been disposed of so far.

“We have disposed of as many as 1,850 complaints within 100 minutes. We have received maximum C-Vigil complaints from Puri, Khurdha, Cuttack, Jajpur, Ganjam, Kandhamal and Mayurbhanj districts. Most of those complaints (around 2,700) are regarding posters and banners.