Kannur set for Saturday's poll, 46 booths sensitive

Kannur (Kerala), Nov 4 : Kerala's keenly contested Kannur constituency is all set for Saturday's by-poll. Paramilitary personnel have been deployed and 46 polling booths have been declared sensitive, officials said Wednesday.

Polls in Kannur, considered a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) bastion, have always been tense. This time, the Election Commission had removed V.K. Balakrishnan as district collector and replaced him with P.B. Salim.

"In all there are 119 polling booths and 10 auxiliary booths. Of these, we have identified 46 as sensitive polling booths," Salim told IANS.

"There are around 270 paramilitary personnel and they will be posted in all the polling booths besides the local police," the district collector added.

Though the district is considered a CPI-M bastion, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate has not won from the Kannur assembly seat in the past seven elections.

The Congress has fielded A.P. Abdulla Kutty, who till early this year was a two-time Lok Sabha member of the CPI-M, while the Marxist party has fielded a heavyweight candidate in M.V. Jayarajan, who had won from the nearby Edakadu constituency in 1996 and 2001.

The by-election Nov 7 has been necessitated because Congress leader K. Sudhakaran, after a hat trick of wins, resigned when he won from the Kannur Lok Sabha seat.

A war of words had broken out between the CPI-M and the Congress Monday when Chief MinisterV.S. Achuthanandan said the central paramilitary forces would have to "sit in barracks" during Nov 7 by-elections.

Leader of Opposition Oommen Chandy Wednesday said it was unfortunate that the chief minister was using threatening language.

"It is the Election Commission that he has challenged but he has not said a word about the list of bogus voters in Kannur," Chandy said.

Defending Achuthanandan, LDF convenor Vaikom Viswan said the chief minister's statement had been twisted by the Congress.

"What he actually meant was that in Kannur there is no need for the army to conduct the elections. The forces have other jobs to do. It is the Congress who twisted this statement," Viswan said.

Ernakulam and Alappuzha are the other two constituencies that also go to polls along with Kannur.

--IANS