SHILLONG, Jan 19 ? The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), J M Lyngdoh Saturday said that he was satisfied with the poll preparations in Meghalaya going to the Assembly elections on February 26. Addressing a press conference here, Lyngdoh said the preparation was much better than that of the last elections in 1998. The CEC said that he was hopeful that the election in the State would be smooth as the State was more peaceful than Tripura and Nagaland.
Lyngdoh praised the State election authorities for covering 80 per cent of the total 12,79,740 voters under photo Identity Cards, and said that the authorities should speed up in issuing these cards to the voters. Expressing slight apprehension about holding of elections in the areas close to the international frontier, he said militants moved around in those parts of the State. When asked what action the Commission would take against a Meghalaya Minister, R A Lyngdoh, who had inaugurated a school building in his Sohiong Constituency after announcement of poll date, Lyngdoh said that the Minister was not informed about the announcement. He said that the Commission would not take any action in this case and warned that such thing should not be repeated.
?Had it happened elsewhere where people do things intentionally, the Commission would have taken stern action,? he said. When asked why names of a large number of voters who had exercised their franchise in the previous elections were deleted from the voters? list, Lyngdoh said that they could be ?bogus voters?. He said deletion of names from voters? list was not new and cited examples of Delhi and West Bengal where a large number of names were removed from the electoral rolls.
When asked what the Commission would do with the voters who were not covered by Photo Identity Cards, Lyngdoh said that he had received suggestions that ration cards or letters of authority issued by the village headmen could be used as documents to aid voters to exercise their franchise. The Commission, however, was yet to take a decision on the matter, he said. Earlier in the day, Lyngdoh met the State Chief Secretary, J Tayeng and high officials, Director General of Police (DGP), L Sailo and representatives of political parties.