BHUBANESWAR: That the political parties have high stakes in the panchayat polls can be gauged from the number of sensitive and hyper-sensitive booths identified by the State Election Commission (SEC) for the three-tier panchayat polls.
The number of sensitive and hyper- sensitive booths almost equals the number of normal booths, figures of which were released by the SEC on Saturday. Out of the total 87,551 booths in the State, 7,498 are hyper-sensitive and 35,987 sensitive, while 44,066 have been identified as normal.
The highest number of 865 hyper-sensitive booths are in Jajpur district. The other districts with a large number of hyper- sensitive booths are Bargarh-261, Balangir-501, Dhenkanal-347, Gajapati-537, Jagatsinghpur-666, Kalahandi-221, Kandhamal-677, Kendrapara-294, Keonjhar-381, Khurda-782, Koraput-658, Deogarh-133, Nabarangpur-145, Nuapada-194, Rayagada-510 and Subarnapur-134.
Angul, Balasore, Bhadrak, Boudh, Cuttack, Ganjam, Malkangiri, Mayurbhanj, Nayagarh, Puri, Sambalpur and Sundargarh districts do not have any hyper-sensitive booths.
Ganjam district has the highest number of sensitive booths __ 4,610 __ out of 6,943 in the district. Cuttack also has more number of sensitive booths (3,933) than normal booths (1,540).