Haryana Chief Election Officer Anurag Agarwal on Friday said that the candidates contesting elections must disclose their criminal records, if any, publicly. For this, candidates must provide complete information about their criminal cases along with an affidavit. Apart from it, the relevant political party must also publish information about the candidates criminal cases on its official website. He said that the process of filing nominations was complete on May 6, and after filing nominations, it is mandatory for candidates and political parties to disclose information about criminal cases at least three times in newspapers and TV channels. The Chief Election Officer announced that special arrangements will be made at polling stations on May 25, considering the summer season. Basic facilities such as tents, fans, and cold drinking water will be ensured to protect voters from the heatwave. Apart from it, voters will receive information from BLO through the queue management app about the number of people in queue, preventing overcrowding at polling stations and reducing wait times for voters to cast their votes with convenience. The CEO reported that the Election Commission has developed the C-Vigil app for voters to report violations of the Model Code of Conduct. In this digital age, IT-savvy voters immediately report any code violations they come across to the commission through this app. In Haryana, voters have sent 7,512 complaints through the C-Vigil app, of which 6,655 have been verified by Assistant Returning Officers.  Agarwal said that the total number of service voters in the state is 111,058. He said that as the counting of postal ballots received from service voters is to be done before the EVM, availability of the required number of scanners should be ensured at the counting centres in advance and added that a separate ARO should be appointed for this work. He said that postal ballots are an important document in counting of votes. Under this, voters and other employees deployed on service voter counting duty and absentee voters are counted. In view of this, a separate nodal officer should be appointed, he said. Agarwal further said that the number of polling stations including temporary polling stations at 10,523 places in the state is 20,031.

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