VIJAYAWADA: Director General of Police (DGP) D Gautam Sawang said the police are all geared up to ensure an incident-free polling in the upcoming gram panchayat elections, to be held in four phases at 13,133 panchayats, across the State starting February 9. Addressing a press conference at the State Police Headquarters in Mangalagiri on Saturday, Sawang said 30,205 polling station locations are spread across 655 mandals.
Of the total, 6,254 polling stations are hyper-sensitive followed by 8,555 sensitive ones. Around 14,414 are normal and 983 are extremist-affected locations, he explained. “Overall, 50 per cent of polling station locations are either hyper-sensitive or sensitive. Keeping this in view, we have intensified our vigil by deploying shadow and special vigilance teams in faction-affected villages to avoid any untoward incidents,” Sawang added.
Informing the poll strategy, he said the department has kept an eye on electoral offenders and surveillance has been intensified. In all, the police have registered 12,779 security cases under which 1,47,391 persons are bound over. Of the total, 1,13,157 bound over are under CrPC 107, 33,873 are under CrPC 110 and 361 are other security under CrPC 108 in Agency areas. The DGP said so far, 44 criminal cases have been registered in the State.
Among them two of them are filed under attempt murder, even cases under obstruction of duties, eight under hurt and 24 under other IPC and three under SC/ST cases. Of the total, 272 people are accused and among them only 124 have been arrested. Only 44 pre-poll offences are reported so far in the State, as against 87 reported in 2013, he added. Explaining details on bandboust at extremist affected areas, Sawang said for every extremist-affected polling station, a strength of 1+4 police personnel are mandated by the State Election Commission (SEC).
In addition to it, Road Operating Parties (with each team consisting 1+5) will be deployed to perform election duties. Further, area domination teams also will be rendered into service till the elections are complete. In view of an election boycott call given by Maoists, confidence building measures such as conducting meetings with the public of affected areas and other measures will be taken. “Apart from social media monitoring teams, our closed camera surveillance teams are monitoring happenings across the State from different police stations and command and control centers,” Sawang said.
Giving out details on the police personnel affected by Covid-19. Sawang said a total of 14,362 police personnel were affected with coronavirus and 109 personnel succumbed to it. Keeping this in view, directions have been given to officials to not deploy old-age personnel on poll duties, he said.
Sawang said all staff will be given PPE kits, face masks, sanitisers and hand gloves. Referring to weekly offs implementation for police personnel, the DGP assured that it will be streamlined after the panchayat polls.