Election Commission braces for high turnout and tension in Varanasi

LUCKNOW: The Election Commission is girding up for a high voter turnout and the possibility of law and order problems in Varanasi on polling day on May 12 thanks to the high-profile contest between Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal and Ajay Rai.

To manage both, senior IAS officer Praveen Kumar, who was dispatched to Varanasi, hit the ground running soon after he landed in the city in the morning on Saturday.

On Saturday morning, in a meeting of over 12 candidates contesting in Varanasi, Kumar listened to the apprehensions of all parties. Representatives of all major parties, except Congress participated in the meeting, wherein it was decided to have videography facilities in all polling centres.

Also, all parties were asked to submit details about their vehicles being used for campaign by 4 pm on Saturday. Supporters from outside Varanasi have been asked to leave the city latest by 8 pm.

Later in the day, Mr Kumar met the Varanasi DM, supervised polling stations, spoke to poll agents and inspected facilities at the control room. Kumar, a 53-year-old officer of the 1987 batch of Indian Administrative Service who hails from Hazaribag of Jharkhand and was the chief electoral officer in Tamil Nadu, admitted this could be one of his toughest assignments.

“It is densely populated area with a keen contest. I am not here to look at who people are supporting, but to make sure they get to vote who they want to,” said Kumar, who is a product of Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur where he did undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses in metallurgy. Kumar also holds an M Phil. in social science from Panjab University.

Kumar has served in the HRD ministry for nearly six years after which he returned to the Tamil Nadu government as special secretary in the finance department in 2007.

In Tamil Nadu, he has been personally involved in increasing voter awareness and in voter enrolment and is credited with for curbing the influence of money in the assembly election of 2011, supervising the seizure of wads of cash. As part of his duties as a special observer in Varanasi, Kumar would keep a close watch on election-related preparedness and the electoral process.