IMPHAL, July 8: The normal functioning of the state election department has been affected severely due to inundation of the office complex of the chief electoral officer located at Lamphelpat for more than two weeks now.
The shut down of the election office is likely to cause a setback in timely completion of the pre-election proceedings of the ensuing 10th Manipur Legislative Assembly election such as publication of draft electoral rolls and rationalization of polling stations.
As per the directive of the Election Commission of India, all pre-election proceedings must begin six months ahead from the schedule of the general election. Subsequently, the state election department has taken up steps to ensure the completion of all pre-election proceedings in time.
The draft publication of revised electoral roll is targeted on October 1 while its final publication is expected on January 5, 2012. However, the non-functioning of the state election office due to inundation for more than two weeks is likely to delay the publication of electoral rolls.
An official of election department told IFP that the pre-election proceedings of the 10th Manipur Legislative Assembly Election were started from June 20 with the duplication of electoral rolls and rationalization of polling stations in a time bound manner. The election department is also planning to open a public grievance redressal call centre and website to obtain feedbacks of the public. But all these processes have been hampered by the inundation of the office complex.
He said that the office complex has been inundated since the middle week of June due to overflowing of the Shamushang canal. The office complex is still half feet under water and no staff could work under such circumstance. Even the security personnel are finding a hard time guarding the office complex amidst the flood water.
Moreover, computers and other equipments of the department have been shifted to some safer place and as of now they are not in an operational state.
The official further maintained that the concerned departments of IFCD and PWD have been intimated about the flood situation but there is no response from the authority till date.
Various offices and residential buildings at Lamphelpat area are still inundated causing lots of inconveniences to the people. The Game village road is also flooded and the people of Lamphelpat have drawn the attention of the concerned authority towards this flood menace.