The Hindu : Front Page : All set for local body polls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Oct 13, 2006
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All set for local body polls

K.T. Sangameswaran and S. Vydhianathan

Security arrangements in place for the first phase today

PHOTO: M. VEDHAN

POLL PROCESS: Ballot boxes being moved to polling stations from Corporation School, Perambur, on Thursday.

K.T. Sangameswaran

and S. Vydhianathan

CHENNAI: Elaborate security arrangements have been made for the first phase of the local body elections in the State on Friday.

At stake are 67,760 posts, a majority of them in rural areas, where elections will be held to choose 50,739 panchayat ward members and 6,557 panchayat presidents.

Chennai, Coimbatore, Salem, and Tirunelveli Corporations and 45 municipalities, 23 third grade municipalities and 281 town panchayats will also go to polls on Friday.

Talking to newsmen here on Thursday, State Election Commissioner D. Chandrasekaran said arrangements had been made for peaceful polling.

Election materials had been moved to all booths and polling would be conducted from 7 am to 5 pm.

Bandobust personnel started taking positions. About 1,00,635 personnel, including Tamil Nadu police and non-police personnel, would be involved. The large-scale deployment was to ensure free, fair and peaceful polling, the police said. Director-General of Police D.Mukherjee is monitoring the bandobust arrangements.

Inspector-General of Police (Elections) R.Sekhar told The Hindu that the first phase would be held in 42,206 booths of which 5,423 had been identified as sensitive in all respects; political, communal and caste-wise. In Chennai alone, such booths numbered 1177.

Twenty-three companies of special armed police from Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh and 600 personnel and officers from the local police of these States would also be on duty.

The services of about 20,000 ex-servicemen, 20,000 NSS volunteers, 500 forest personnel, 1,100 fire servicemen, 9,000 home guards and 2,000 retired police personnel would be utilised for poll work. Besides, about 1,600 personnel from the special units of the Tamil Nadu police would be involved.

Each of the six Inspectors-General of Police, 18 Deputy Inspectors-General and 57 Superintendents of Police would have within his control a striking force consisting of a sub-inspector and 14 other ranks personnel.

Similarly, each of the 90 Additional Superintendents and 333 Deputy Superintendents and 1,241 Inspectors would have a striking force party to be rushed to a place of emergency. Care had been taken to ensure that regular law and order work by Inspectors and other personnel in police stations was not affected in any way.

There would be mobile parties and 452 striking force parties for panchayat unions, municipalities and corporation areas.

The idea behind the deployment was to ensure that the police responded to any emergency in the shortest time, Mr. Sekar said.

Sensitive booths

In the second phase of elections on October 15, a total of 38,252 booths would be covered of which 4,162 were identified as sensitive. A total of 210 sensitive booths were in Chennai.

As there would be a lesser number of polling booths in the second stage, more security personnel would be available for bandobust work.

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