1.6 lakh security personnel needed to ensure smooth conduct of polls: Chief Electoral Officer
Chief Electoral Officer Mukesh Kumar Meena says that a posse of around 1.6 lakh security personnel including the forces from the State and Centre is needed to ensure smooth conduct of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the State.
Pointing out that 1.31 lakh security personnel were deployed for the elections in the State in 2019, Mr. Meena, during a chat with The Hindu at the Secretariat at Velgapudi on Thursday, said that more security personnel would be needed this time due to the ‘new scale’ introduced by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for conducting the general elections.
“At least 3.26 lakh employees including the security personnel will be needed for the conduct for the elections in Andhra Pradesh,” said Mr. Meena.
Referring to the measures to check the illegal flow of money and liquor into the State, Mr. Meena said that cash, gold, silver, liquor, drugs and other material worth ₹142 crore had been seized since January. “We have set up 110 checkposts to check the illegal transport of cash, liquor and other material,” he said.
There are around 8,600 individuals who have licensed guns. Except for those working in banking and certain other sectors, all private licence holders have been instructed to surrender their weapons to the Police Department.
The CEO said critical and vulnerable polling booths are being identified. Once the Election Code is enforced, the actual number of critical booths will be finalised.
“All the critical polling stations will be brought under strict CCTV surveillance and the entire polling process will be webcast. One Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) personnel, one from the Civil Police and one microobserver from the Central government will be deployed at every critical polling station,” said Mr. Meena.
Around six to eight CAPF personnel will be deployed at the polling booths in the areas affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE). He further said that the polling stations had been broadly divided into two categories— critical and noncritical. The noncritical polling stations would have a police constable and a home guard.
“We have sought 392 companies of the CAPF and 100 companies have reached the State. Each company comprises 80 to 90 CAPF personnel. In total 197 companies of the CAPF were deployed during the elections in 2019,” said Mr. Meena.
In total, 31 strong rooms have been set up to store EVMs after the polling till the counting. The strong rooms will be under the surveillance of a threetier security, he added.