Mumbai, October 05: A comparison of the number of polling booths in the state and the availability of police personnel shows that, the state police would have provisions for just one home guard or an unarmed cop to man a polling booth and one armed police constable to manage a ‘sensitive’ booth.
The scenario gets ominous with the looming terror threat, communal tensions, political rivalries and suspected large scale naxal violence expected during the October 13 assembly elections.
There are nearly 82,028 polling booths in the state and the number of cops including those from the State Reserve Police (SRP) stands at 1.5 lakh. There are additional 28,000 home guards in the state, but that number is not enough as half of them has to remain at the their respective police stations under all circumstances.
The main issue of concern for the police is to secure over 3,200 sensitive and highly sensitive booths with 546 of them falling in the naxal-affected districts of Gadchiroli, Chandrapur and Gondia alone. The recent disturbances in several towns of Kolhapur, Satara and Sangli have also added to the number of sensitive booths.
The Gadchiroli district alone has 191 sensitive booths and 234 highly sensitive booths. The cops would require a three-tier security ring to conduct fair and free polls in these areas. The centre has already sent nearly 2,000 specially trained commandos but the state would need 3,000 more.
The cops have demanded some 30,000 central troops of which the centre has already made arrangements for some 18,000 and with just ten days to go for the polls, the police force in the state remain wary.
–Agencies–