EVMs stored at the strong room at the Bhubanananda Odisha School of Engineering in Cuttack. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Bhubaneswar/Cuttack, April 18: The district administration has arranged for tight security at the strong rooms where the electronic voting machines are kept at various places in the state with the counting still a month away.

While the machines have been kept at three places in Cuttack district, these have been stored at two places in Khurda district. In Bhubaneswar, the machines have been stored at a sealed strong room located in BJB Autonomous College.

The Election Commission has instructed to make three-tier security arrangement for the strong rooms where EVMs have been kept. The machines have been stored in strong rooms at 64 places across the state.

According to the Election Commission guidelines, the three-tier security arrangement mostly includes the central armed police force, which will guard the inner circle followed by the state armed police force that will be at the second tier and the peripheral tier will be under local police. There will be one platoon for every circle.

The strong room will be under vigilance by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras round the clock. There will be fire extinguishers to prevent fire mishaps. For the monitoring, the district administrations have been asked to ensure uninterrupted power supply to the strong rooms.

The strong rooms are under the charge of the returning officer, who will make visit every day. Logbooks of visitors will be maintained and everything will be videographed. The returning officer or district election officer will make regular visits and check these things.

A Cuttack district administration official said that over 4,300 machines were stored at nine strong rooms in Cuttack, Athgarh and Banki. In Bhubaneswar, around 1,800 EVMs have been kept at the strong room in BJB college.

The sealed EVMs from six of nine Assembly constituencies in Cuttack district have been locked inside the strong rooms at Bhubanananda Odisha School of Engineering and at Kendriya Vidyalaya, respectively.

“All the sealed EVMs were locked inside the strong rooms today after they were collected from various polling parties. Treasury officials will supervise the strong rooms, while adequate security personnel have been deployed for these ballot boxes till May 16,” said district collector Girish S.N. In Bhubaneswar, the sub-collector and other officials were busy arranging for the security and safekeeping of the EVMs in BJB college. The machines from Bhubaneswar Ekamra, north, centre, Jayadev and Jatni have been kept here.

“We have taken all the precautions according to the Election Commission’s guidelines,” said Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation commissioner Krishan Kumar, who is also the district election officer for Bhubaneswar.

There has been also tented accommodation outside the outer ring of security for the political parties to deploy their agents to keep watch on the entrance to the strong room.