The East Godavari police are all set to rope in the six companies of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) that are guarding the district’s tri-State borders of Telangana, Odisha and the Dandakaranya region of Chhattisgarh to ensure the smooth conduct of elections in the 78 gram panchayats that have been declared as areas affected by Left Wing Extremism (LWE).
In an official release, District Collector D. Muralidhar Reddy said that 78 gram panchayats fall in the LWE-affected area while 11 others were “inaccessible.”
Of the total 1,103 gram panchayats in the district, only 1,072 will go to the polls. The remaining 31 will not go to the polls as there is a proposal to merge them in urban bodies.
Of the 32.54 lakh voters who will exercise their franchise, the number of women voters is 16.33 lakh.
“We are prepared to conduct elections in the LWE-affected panchayats with the support of the six CRPF companies that are already on ground to check the LWE activities at the tri-State border. Talks will be held with the CRPF authorities on January 31 to finalise the action plan,” Superintendent of Police Adnan Nayeem Asmi told The Hindu.
“Our prime concerns are to ensure transportation of the polling material to certain pockets in the Chintoor Agency and reaching the inaccessible terrains. The existing CRPF force will be enough to conduct the polling in the strategic areas,” he said.
‘The existing environment in the Agency is favourable for the conduct of elections peacefully,” Mr. Nayeem Asmi said.
Major challenge
“Absence of communication system in some pockets in the Agency remains a major challenge for the conduct of election through the ballot box method,” he added.
As many as 272 panchayats have been declared hypersensitive and 283 as sensitive. As many as 11,872 ballot boxes are required for the elections.
