The State election authorities are taking steps to ensure smooth conduct of elections in the areas affected by Left Wing Extremism in the State.
The election authorities are focussing on the seven districts with presence of LWE activity as notified by the Ministry of Home Affairs. They had initially contemplated to deploy drones, especially on the polling day, for checking extremist activities in the LWE-affected constituencies, but the proposal was dropped owing to security reasons.
“There will be no clarity on whether the drone deployed in a particular area is controlled by the police or private parties. There will be no control if mischievous elements take advantage of the technology,” a senior official told The Hindu. Teams from the central armed forces had been deployed in the sensitive areas in addition to the greyhounds teams that were already positioned.
The issue was discussed during the high-level meeting of the election authorities and senior police officials and it was decided, instead, to deploy adequate forces to avoid any untoward incident. The meeting discussed the extremist threat to elections and the police concerned were asked to assess the situation in the affected areas to make sure that there was no threat to candidates campaigning in the sensitive constituencies. “Extremists are not that active here as in Chhattisgarh. But since they have given a poll boycott call, we decided to make adequate arrangements to avoid any untoward incidents,” CEO Rajat Kumar said. The focus was especially on putting in place an effective mechanism in 13 constituencies where there were reports of Maoist activities. A meeting of TS police and other enforcement officials with their counterparts of the neighbouring States had been convened to assess the situation and take action accordingly. In addition to the 53 expenditure observers who were deployed in different districts, the election authority had put in place assistant expenditure observers along with support staff to assist them.
Apart from the regular inspections, it was decided to take up video surveillance for checking possible violations by the political parties or their candidates.