 My name is Loli Adalia, so I've been assigned as a presiding officer. I'm Dr. Nandita Maesnap, assistant professor of Brimangal College, and I have been deployed by the Director of Education U for the upcoming 12 assembly elections, so SAPRO. Since this is my first experience, and I'm very privileged to be assigned in this election in the year of 2022, so it is intimidating as well as I know that I can do it. I think EVM is a very distinct which we can do it purely because ballot paper we can manipulate the candidates or anything we can manipulate or even like snatching of the boots, it is much easier for the ballot papers, ballot books and all, but EVM is much better, is a better option. It's a very new and nice environment, it is very an upliftment apart from my distinct education line, so teaching and learning process, so this is as a turning point I should say. Like it has changed my confidence after attending this meeting, sorry training. Manipur is one of five Indian states currently voting in a new legislative assembly. Polling is being held in two phases on February 28 and March 5 this year. The exercise, aside from political aspects, requires massive personnel and logistical coordination. The state's chief electoral officer decided, among other measures, to set up 600 polling boots managed exclusively by women, excluding security personnel. We spoke to some of the women deputed for polling duty and to the returning officer assembly constituencies 14 and 15, to get a sense of why this measure was taken and what sort of impact it may have. So today we have the last round of training for the women polling personnel of 14 Nyayi school and 15 Wangkai AC and we are making sure that they know exactly what they have to do when they go for the poll day on 28 February. The first reason was because of there was a exigency in terms of how when we started taking requisition from all the other departments for elections we found that there were not enough men to man all the polling stations. So we decided to actually requisition women instead because there were a large number of women in government service, especially in sectors like education where there are almost 60 to 70 percent amount of women in departments like education, social welfare. So we have requisition women, government servants from education department, social welfare department, MSPDCL, horticulture. So from so many departments all over the district and we have been training them for four rounds. This is the last round of training before we go for the polls. So we have been doing hands-on training and making sure they know how to operate the EVM machines, how to plug it in, take it out and you know how and so even if there is a problem we have ECIL engineers stationed with us. We have sector magistrates who have been trained in case of any malfunction they will go on the spot and replace it. So we have got everything covered. So far the women polling personnel who have come for training they are very enthusiastic, very eager to learn. Some of them have actually done poll duty before in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and this time we are having both 14 and 15 school in Wangke assembly constituencies completely being conducted by women polling personnel. It's incredible to work with them and I learn from them because they also have a lot of experience. Many of them are assistant professors much older than me. They have been in service for 20-30 years so they also have a lot to say and they are very eager to learn. There is something called a Booth app also which they have to give the attendance of the voters on an app. So we have been teaching them how to do that as well apart from the normal forms they have to fill and the EVMs they have to operate. So far it's been fun as well as tiring at the same time but so far challenging definitely definitely. So we have 88 polling stations. There will be four number of persons for each polling station. So altogether 88 we have around 360 people but we also have reserved personnel in case anyone falls ill or anything. So we have trained around 400 women polling personnel for YI school in Wangke. We have made sure that they have to follow the COVID protocols. They have to mask up. We'll be giving them COVID kids which has masks, face shields, sanitizers not just for them but also for the voters in case they require any mask in case any voter comes without a mask. So we'll be having sanitization process. We have Anganwadi worker station in every polling station who will be thermal scanning in case there are any voters with high temperature will take them aside and we will make them give their vote only after everyone else has given their vote. We'll also be making sure that the queue is staggered in the sense that there's a six feet difference between one person to make sure that it's as safe as possible. And we also don't want to deny any vote to anyone as possible. So even those who are showing some COVID symptoms or anything they'll be kept aside and they'll be allowed to vote after everyone else has voted. I think the first time we had women polling personnel in Manipur was in 2019 Lok Sabha elections and in that time YI school was completely again manned like you said by women polling personnel and it was a very successful one. It was done very peacefully and there was no complaints. So actually I got a lot of reports from the previous officers that in fact women actually perform better. They're more successful and they were very careful and very cautious. I think it's because sometimes men tend to feel very overconfident and they tend to make mistakes because of the overconfidence but in the case of women they're more careful and they're always revising and checking in case something is wrong. Another thing is I think women are better conflict resolvers. I think they know how to handle situations in case it gets in case people start fighting or there's some disturbance. They know how to calm people down. They know how to persuade them so that things go smoothly. So I think they have the skills from social conditioning I guess. We have something called Mission 300. So four polling stations of school and one polling station of Bankai which recorded a slightly lower than average percentage of people voting. These polling stations we have been focusing on them and we have had a lot of sweep initiatives where we are trying to engage more people to come out and vote and I think women will play a very big role and the fact that we have all these women polling personnel I think more women will feel encouraged to come out and we'll even have creche centers in case women with child if they can keep the child for a while and then yes and we also have in some polling stations we'll be having medical personnel also. So in case they can take any kind of health checkup if they want to get done we'll be having some of the vaccination points in many of these polling stations also so they can get vaccinated as well. So we're trying to have many of these things with multiple things happening at the same time in this polling station so that people feel more engaged not just as a place where they can come to vote but they can actually engage with the community and they can actually get something out of it. Initially I had to do a lot of reading and we've also been trained by the CO office so we've also been trained by the DC everyone has been very supportive from the CO to the DC and all my election team I don't think I could have done it without an amazing robust team of people who have been helping conduct elections for 20-30 years so I have an amazing staff who have always been able to guide me even when I find it a bit difficult to understand so I've had the support of an amazing team and we have been doing things for the last 3-4 months since the election process started we have people deputed from different departments like the court team, static surveillance team sector magistrates so I've been working closely with them as well we have been going for lots of trainings lots of video conferences and I feel that I have learned so much in the last 3 months than I did in the last one and a half years so I think this has been a great experience for me and I think even if I go to another post or department I'll be able to take this forward take the learning forward and even if I fall short in some ways I hope that it will be a learning process for me and I'll be able to do better next time