LS poll process kick-starts from today

SHILLONG: With the filing of nominations starting on Saturday, the official election process will begin in Meghalaya which is going to polls on April 9 for the Shillong and Tura Lok Sabha seats. The official notification of the poll process has also been scheduled for Saturday.
The last date for filing of nominations is March 22. The last date for withdrawal of candidature is March 26, while the scrutiny of the nominations will be done on March 24.
Counting of votes will be held on May 16, along with the rest of the country.
Meghalaya Chief Electoral Officer P Naik said on Friday that the Election Department was fully prepared for the polls and the expenditure observers would be arriving on Saturday.
The Election Department will also deploy flying squads and static surveillance team to prevent the use of money power during elections.
The expenditure slab for the candidate has been fixed at Rs.70 lakh. Rs.29 crore is projected  as the expenditure to be incurred by Election Department for conducting elections for the two seats in Meghalaya.
Naik said that filing of nominations is likely to pick up only next week since there is a holiday till Monday coupled with the late announcement of the names of candidates by the different political parties.
While the total voters under Shillong Lok Sabha seat is 9,68,958, for Tura it is 5,84,070.
There are a total number of 356 polling stations categorized as hyper sensitive and the number of sensitive polling stations is 236.
While as many as 138 polling stations in 102 locations fall along the border with Assam, the number of polling stations bordering Bangladesh is 90 spread across 79 locations.