Odisha: Security beefed up for smooth conduct of third phase of polling

Bhubaneswar: Odisha police has beefed up security arrangements to ensure smooth and peaceful conduct of the polling process during the third phase of elections in the state to be held on Saturday.

As per reports, a total of 94.8 lakh voters will decide the fate of 64 candidates in the six Lok Sabha seats and 383 candidates in the 42 assembly seats in the third phase.

All the six LS seats will see big fights as the electorate will decide the political fate of stalwarts like BJP’s Dharmendra Pradhan, Sambit Patra, Aparajita Sarangi, Bhartruhari Mahtab, Ananta Nayak, Rudranarayan Pani and BJD’s Pranab Prakash Das, Santrupt Mishra, Arup Patnaik, Manmath Routray, Congress’ Nagendra Pradhan and Yasir Nawaz.

All the 42 assembly seats are under the Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Sambalpur, Dhenkanal and Keonjhar parliamentary segments.

Speaking to media persons on Friday, Director General of Police (DGP) Arun Kumar Sarangi said that a total of 35,000 state police and paramilitary security personnel will be deployed to maintain law and order during the third phase of the polling process to be conducted in six Lok Sabha and 42 assembly segments under 12 police districts.

Polling will be held in 10, 551 booths located in 7,646 locations among which around 20 per cent of booths are reportedly sensitive booths.

“As many as 121 companies of paramilitary forces, 106 platoons of Odisha Armed Police and 19,865 civil police forces have been deployed for the smooth and peaceful conduct of the third phase of elections in Odisha. As many as 43 Additional SPs, 95 DSPs, 238 inspectors, 2160 SIs, 10, 212 armed and unarmed Constables and Havildars, 7,117 Home Guards and Grama Rakhis will be deployed for this purpose," informed the DGP.

As election processes have been completed in other states, Election Commission of India has allotted us 20 companies of extra paramilitary security personnel.

“ We had provided 1200 Home Guards to Chhattisgarh in the first phase of National Elections and in return, they have provided us 300 constables and 700 constables who will be on election duty in Odisha on May 25,” said Sarangi during the presser.

Taking the sensitive booths into account, the Odisha police has mobilised five young IPS officers of ASP rank in Sambalpur, Khurdha, Keonjhar and Cuttack. As per our security arrangement, police personnel and Paramilitary Forces will be deployed at booth level and a mobile patrolling team will take care of the security arrangement in 10-12 booths.

An inspector will be in charge of a sector comprising some booths. Each Assembly segment has been divided into two parts and a DSP will be in charge of the security arrangement there. An Additional SP rank officer will be in charge of security arrangements for all the assembly segments where polling will be conducted in the third phase.

“We have also deployed either one or a half section of the Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) in each sensitive booth. As per the guidelines by the ECI, paramilitary forces have been deployed in all the booths. We have formed a total of 763 mobile parties and they are the backbone of security arrangements in the ongoing elections. They will ensure smooth and peaceful conduct of elections in the sensitive booths,” Sarangi added.