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Electioneering a major challenge in Bastar

— Photo: Akhilesh Kumar

Paramilitary forces take out a flag march at Dhamtari in Chhattisgarh on Sunday, in view of the Assembly elections.

RAIPUR: If conducting elections in the militancy-ridden Jammu and Kashmir has been a challenge for the Indian democracy, ensuring free and safe polling in the naxal-affected Bastar region of Chhattisgarh is no less a herculean task. With just days to go for voting in the first phase covering the whole Bastar area — the entire focus of the government, Election Commission and the State police is on providing security to the voters and people on election duty.

“We are prepared for some naxal activities to scuttle electioneering but we have a reasonably adequate para-military, State police and armed police forces of the other States to keep the naxalites and their sympathisers at bay,” Mr. Vishwaranjan, Director-General of police told The Hindu. “But what we are not prepared for is loosing our men,” he said.

The four revenue districts in Bastar region — Dantewada, Bastar, Narayanpur and Kanker — have 12 Assembly segments and conducting elections here is a major challenge because of heavy presence of naxal activists and their supporters who havegiven a call forboycott.

In the last three years since the Salwa Judum, an “anti-naxal people’s movement,” began over 50,000 people have been displaced from villages in Dandewada and Bastar.

These people are now living in camps run by the government. The Election Commission has made special arrangements for these people to vote. While polling booths will be set up at the camps, parallel booths will also be established in the villages for those who still live there. The Elections Commission has prepared duplicate voters lists to ensure there is no bogus voting.

Polling booths have been set up in jungles as far as 108 km from the district headquarters for the 5 to 7 per cent of people who come to vote.

Ferrying election staff and material in itself is a challenge because roads leading to these polling booths could be mined and people, along with the security personnel, have to walk through the jungles. There can be no helicopter service as, again, the helipads would need additional security cover.

Every candidate here has been given a posse of policemen for security cover. The deployment itself has been an extreme difficult task asbattalions of security forces have travelled together to give security cover to each other. But again, the last group to be deployed is in itself large a huge posse.

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