Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Arrangements for smooth conduct of polls

Staff Reporter

Group patrols provided with video cameras

Thiruvananthapuram: The police have made elaborate arrangements to ensure that the voters exercise their franchise without fear or favour and to maintain law and order in the Assembly constituencies that go to polls in the State on April 22, 29 and May 3.

Policemen have been posted in all polling booths in the State, said Director General of Police Raman Srivastava. Special police teams will be deployed where more than one polling booth are set up in a building, in booths at remote places and booths which are likely to witness law and order problems.

In addition to the personnel from the local police, District Armed Police, Armed Police Battalion, Special Branch and Women, 2,025 police personnel from other States have been deployed for election duty. Over 13,000 Special Police Officers and service of the 1,500 personnel from Forest, Excise and Transport Departments will be used.

Kannur, Kasaragod

As many as 22,000 police personnel will be deployed for duty in the first phase, 24,000 in the second phase and 19,000 police personnel will be posted for the third phase election to be held in Kannur and Kasaragod districts.

The Assembly constituencies have been divided into groups and a Sub-Inspector will head each group patrol. As many as 1,575 group patrols will be deployed. The group patrols will visit all polling booths in their locality every 15 to 20 minutes. The group patrols have been provided with video cameras.

In addition to the group patrols, 1,706 law and order mobile patrols will be deployed.

The police will start patrolling from April 20 and continue till the results are announced. As many as four law and order mobile patrols will be set up under each police station in the State.

To ensure the smooth functioning of the group and law and order patrols and to handle law and order situation on the spot, 269 election circles headed by Circle Inspectors and 96 election sub-divisions headed by Dy.SP's linking the election circles will be set up.

A separate election control room will be set up at the police headquarters in the capital city. Twenty-four hour control rooms have started functioning in district police headquarters from 10 a.m. on April 17. In addition to the above arrangements, strike forces headed by DGP, ADGP (Operations), Zonal IG's and Range DIG's have been set up.

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