Palamu district education officer Durganand Jha has directed officials of all the government schools to step up awareness drive for more and more polling this lok sabha election here.    Jha has sought photos of such drives being conducted in the schools. He asked his officials to update the programmes under the SVEEP in all sincerity and seriousness.    He said our aim is that our school students prevail upon their parents and relatives to cast votes and not to remain  leisurely at home on the day of voting which is May 13 for the Palamu lok sabha seat and May 20 for the Chatra lok sabha constituency under which comes the assembly constituency Panki of Palamu.    Jha said "We have a strong workforce of 1700 female teachers drawn from our fleet of the government primary schools, government middle schools and government high schools".   These female teachers will be engaged in all woman polling booths, may be called Pink polling stations and Pardanasheen booths as well whose numbers are 63 and 55 respectively.    Jha said with confidence "Our teachers including female teachers are bouyed with the spirit of democracy and they know they are duty bound to contribute to the democratic set up of the country."   The contractual teachers of the KGBAV and JABV have been kept off the poll duties simply because of their being contractual as ECI has asked for no contractual worker to be engaged or drafted in poll works in any capacity.    There are 12 KGBAVs and 8 JABVs in Palamu. The number of high schools is 168 but taking into account the government primary and middle school the over all number of the government schools is 2600 plus in Palamu.    Jha said "Our government schools have infrastructural facilities but our emphasis is on clean drinking water and shauchalaya."   He said the block development officers keep facility audits of the schools where polling stations have been set up taking note of water,hygiene ramps and electricity.    Jha added our education officials are also conducting survey for the facilities available.    The district education officer said there are 21 blocks here in Palamu but there are only 4 block education extension officers. One BEEO is thus holding more than 3 or 4 blocks.    134 polling stations are in Chainpur blocks government schools while in Ramgarh block 28 government schools will double up as polling stations.    Harihurganj block close to Bihar will have polling stations in 56 government schools. Nawa Bazars 40 government schools will be the polling stations in this lok sabha election, added the district education officer.

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