Hyderabad: The Telangana police is confident that Friday’s elections will be incident-free and fair, having deployed forces in sensitive and hypersensitive polling stations across the state.
The police has identified 5,000 critical polling stations among the 32,815 in the state after analysing the nearly 15 incidents that took place during polling in 2014.
Following a series of incidents at Kodangal, the polling stations marked critical have been deemed more sensitive and extra forces are being deployed there, said a senior police official.
Around 1,300 cases of violation of the model code of conduct were registered during the previous general elections, and all the cases were charge-sheeted in the courts. This also included the 12 cases booked under the Arms Act.
Speaking to the media on Thursday, Additional Director General (Law & Order) Jitender said “Kodangal Assembly constituency was treated as sensitive due to the political developments. After the recent incidents, extra forces are being deployed to ensure that no further incidents take place.”
Condemning the allegations that police personnel were partial towards one political party, Mr Jitender said, “As many as 1,350 cases of violation of model code of conduct have been registered which also include the cases against the members of TRS. We do not leave anyone and are not taking the side of any party. Cases are booked against all those violating MCC.”
The Maoists have given a call to boycott the elections at several places and there are 13 Maoist-affected constituencies in five districts — Adilabad, Warangal, Khammam, Karimnagar and Kothagudem.
“After the Assembly was dissolved, the Maoists gave a poll boycott call. We have arrested several militants and sympathisers and a divisional committee member. All measures have been taken and the state police are confident to run incident-free and fair elections,” said the official.
The official said that around 3,300 sensitive polling stations were identified across the state among which 1,600 are found to be hypersensitive areas, where senior police officials are appointed for supervision of hassle-free polling.
In connection with the Wednesday’s incident at the house of Jupudi Prabhakar Rao, chairman of the Andhra Pradesh SC Co-operative Finance Corporation, a case under Section 171 E of IPC was booked, from where about Rs 17.5 lakh cash recovered from two persons who were running away with two bags of cash thrown from the house of the TD leader.
