Bhopal, Nov 12 (PTI) Byelections to Budhni and Vijaypur assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh will be held on Wednesday and all preparations are in place for smooth and peaceful polling, officials said.
Polling will be held from 7 am to 6 pm.
The bypoll to Vijaypur in Sheopur district was necessitated after sitting Congress MLA Ramniwas Rawat joined the BJP and was made a minister in the Mohan Yadav cabinet. The Budhni bypoll was required as sitting MLA and former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was elected to the Lok Sabha.
The BJP has fielded former Vidisha MP and Chouhan loyalist Ramakant Bhargava from Budhni against Congress' Rajkumar Patel, a former state minister.
In Vijaypur, forest minister Ramniwas Rawat of the BJP will take on Congress' Mukesh Malhotra, a senior tribal leader.
The number of registered voters in Vijaypur assembly constituency is 2,54,817, comprising 1,33,581 men and 1,21,131women and 103 service voters.
In Budhni, there are 2,76,604 voters. These include 1,47,197 men, 1,33,401 women and 195 service voters.
There are 327 polling stations in Vijaypur, while the figure for Budhni is 363, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of the state Sukhveer Singh said.
A total of 2,760 poll officials and employees have been deployed to conduct by-elections in the two assembly constituencies, he said.
About 1,500 district police personnel and adequate numbers of Home Guards and Special Police Officers (SPOs) have been deployed for security.
More than 100 sector magistrates and an equal number of sector police officers have also been deployed and they will keep visiting their respective sector areas during the entire period of polling.
This time the Election Commission has also installed GPS devices on the vehicles of sector officers, so that if any kind of disorder is reported in any center, the nearest sector magistrate and other officers can be alerted immediately.
Their areas have been fixed in such a way that a sector magistrate can reach any polling booth under his or her command within 15 minutes, the official said.
The CEO appealed to the voters to cast their votes freely and fearlessly.