Indore: With identification of 143 vulnerable and 316 critical polling booths across all nine constituencies, the district electoral office has started its preparations to ensure free and fair voting at these sensitive stations during the forthcoming assembly polls.As per the official records, Indore-I and Indore-IV constituencies have maximum 30 polling stations identified as vulnerable, while the state’s biggest constituency, Indore-V, has no vulnerable station out of its total 441 polling booths.Officials concerned said, a vulnerable polling booth is where the voters were issued threat or influenced to vote for or against a candidate in the last assembly polls, and or have chances of repetition of the incidents during the upcoming assembly polls.Besides the polling booths, 509 vulnerable voters have been identified. Sanwer has maximum 131 vulnerable voters followed by 102 in Indore-II constituency. Depalpur and Indore-V constituencies have no such electors. Also, 194 people have been identified for intimidating or wrongfully influencing voters causing vulnerability.The authority concerned has externed 30 people and bounded over 33. One person has been taken into custody. Also, appropriate action has been taken against 91 people, while there are 39 people against whom action is yet to be taken.The critical polling booths are those which had witnessed no polling and violence in the last assembly and general polls. Booths in which a large number of voters were not issued electors photo identity card or which has a large number of missing voters are also identified as critical. Besides, the polling booths, which had witnessed 90% of voting and where above 75% of polling were recorded in favour of one candidate, have been put in the critical category.“At the critical polling booths, the authority will appoint micro-observer, while photography during voting will also be carried out. Apart from instructions to the presiding officer to pay extra attention in proper verification of every elector, a team of paramilitary force will be deployed there,” ADM Nidhi Nivedita told TOI.

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