Berhampur, June 3: Political parties such as the Congress and the BJP have criticised the election officer of the Berhampur Municipal Corporation over finalising booths for the coming civic polls.

Election officer-cum-additional district magistrate, Ganjam, Nirmal Mishra held a meeting today with representatives of various political parties to suggest locations of polling booths in the 40 wards of the corporation.

Ram Kumar Patra, president, Berhampur Mahanagar BJP unit, and Badri Narayan Nayak, general secretary, district Congress committee, who attended the all-party meeting, criticised Mishra’s attitude. “The election officer has already finalised the pooling booths and had kept us in the dark about the list until he declared it at the meeting. He gave us just 24 hours to suggest changes in the list. How can we decide in so a short a time?” Nayak asked.

“The polling booth list is being prepared to woo the ruling BJD and the election officer is trying to impose the list on other political parties. This meeting is simply an eyewash to meet the formalities of the Election Commission,” said Patra.

Patra and Nayak alleged that Mishra had done this on the instruction of the BJD.

Mishra said: “Our proposal was to have 219 booths in 40 wards consisting of 2.25 lakh voters — 1.15 lakh male and 1.10 lakh female. We will make necessary changes in the polling booth list after receiving suggestions from various political parties within Tuesday. We will send the list to the Election Commission for final approval on June 7.”

According to the draft list, the highest number of polling booths is in ward No. 4 (nine), consisting of 9,190 voters, and the minimum number in ward No. 21 (two) consisting of 2,162 voters. The civic poll is expected to be held in three months.