Shoot-at-sight order for Bihar by-polls

State home secretary R K Singh said here that shoot orders have been issued against those trying to grab booths and disturb the polling process. The chief electoral officer, A K Basu, informed mediapersons that ballot papers would not be made available in booths where a static force was not deployed before 7 am tomorrow, as per the Commission’s orders.

Polling in those booths would be held day after tomorrow under effective deployment of armed policemen, he added. Singh said the Centre had made available 30 companies of Central Para-Military Forces as against 85 demanded by the state. Besides, 13companies of the CPMF, already deployed in different parts of the state, would be pressed into service on the polling day. Forty-four companies of the Bihar Military Police and the district armed police would be engaged for manning booths.

Polling will be held tomorrow in three Lok Sabha and 51 Assembly seats in the first major battle of ballots since the BJP-led coalition assumed power at the Centre nearly three months ago.

The outcome of the hustings, involving an electorate of just over a crore spread across 13 states, is likely to be a commentary, even if in a small way, on the tenure of the Vajpayee government marked among other things by differences among its coalition partners, nuclear tests by India and Pakistan and the national budget.

Of the three LS seats, polling in Ladakh in J&K and Mandi in Himachal Pradesh were to be held along with the Parliamentary elections in February-March this year but had to be postponed due to inclement weather.

The polls for Tarn Taran LS seat wasnecessitated by the refusal of former Akali candidate to give up his Assembly seat after his victory in the Parliamentary poll. Lalpura was later expelled from the Akali Dal.

An absorbing battle is on the cards in Mandi where Pratibha Singh, wife of former Himachal chief minister Virbhadra Singh, is in the fray against BJP nominee Maheshwar Singh backed by the HVC of Sukh Ram and the Rashtriya Janata Party whose nominee withdrew in favour of the BJP.