For 7 & 13 Voters, Poll Officials Brave Hills & Forests In Melghat

Nagpur: Teams have started off early, two days before the election, from the dispatch centre at Fatima Convent school in Amravati district’s Achalpur town to reach polling stations in the Melghat hills.Normally, the election team reaches voting centres a day before the polling. However, there are 136 remote stations in Melghat, a tribal pocket amid the Satpura hill ranges and large tracts of tiger reserve, where they are leaving no chance for a delay.

The staff will have to reach far off villages, driving through hill roads and forests, hoping there are no road blocks or any other hurdles. Among the sparsely populated villages, separate stations will be set up at Pilli and Patsalai for 7 and 13 voters respectively. Officially, the villages have been long shifted to make way to expand Melghat Tiger reserve. But a handful residents still hold on, resisting land acquisition, and the poll machinery will reach out to them too and set up a voting station. As the region is cut-off from mobile connectivity or internet in some pockets, reporting on voting turnout will have to be done by wireless or even motorcycle riders carrying messages.Part of Chikhaldara tehsil, the two villages are more than 50km from the dispatch centre at Achalpur in the foothills. It takes nearly double the time to reach there as compared to the plains, said an election official. There are a number of sparsely populated villages in Melghat, however, Pilli and Patsalai have the least number of voters, said the officer.Once infamous for malnutrition deaths, Melghat has 2.86 lakh voters, which account for 15% of the voter base in Amravati Lok Sabha constituency. With a high turnout rate, Melghat remains a crucial area for candidates.Since installation of mobile towers is restricted due to the tiger reserve, a number of villages remain cut off from mobile services. As details of election turnout have to be uploaded in the Election Commission portal every two hours, the district administration has tied up with the forest department to relay data through wireless sets. However, in some places even the wireless network may fail at times. In that case runners from the forest department will take over. The runners will take off on their motorbikes to reach the nearest spot where mobile connectivity is available, or the radio sets can work, said the government source.There are 52 such villages but special arrangements have been made in 72 villages due to the local conditions. Trial runs were held in each of the villages by conducting a mock poll. The runners have been kept as standby arrangement in most cases, but in Marti village, the turnout reporting will solely depend on the motorcycle men, said a senior official. The village has little over 400 voters.Some of the remote villages also don’t have power connections. But officials have promised to provide the minimum facilities in each polling station. The area has 316 polling centres in all.