About 44K cops to be deployed on poll day

Kolkata: The state government on Wednesday assured the state Election Commision (SEC) of adequate deployment of state police forces for conducting free and fair elections in 108 municipalities across the state scheduled on February 27.

The state has said that it will be deploying 40,000 police forces for the polls while the SEC commissioner has asked for another 10 per cent increase of state police, so effectively 44,000 police forces will be on duty on the polling day, There will be at least one armed police for each of the polling booths.

SEC Commissioner Sourav Das held a meeting with the top brass of the police administration including Home Secretary B.P. Gopalika for finalising the security aspect of the civic polls. "The Commissioner has instructed to take measures for confidence building among the voters and lay special emphasis on security surveillance on the sensitive areas. Special police force like RAF, EFR, should be deployed so that prompt intervention can be made in case of any disturbance," a senior SEC official said. An official in the rank of DIG will supervise the polls in every poll-bound district and will maintain constant liaison with the SEC so that prompt intervention can be made in case of any untoward incident.

Till date, the SEC has around 125 observers for the elections which will increase further.