By IANS,
Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has received intelligence inputs that Maoists from neighbouring states have infiltrated into the state to foment trouble during voting for the assembly elections Tuesday, a senior police official said here Monday.
“We have got intelligence reports that Maoists are infiltrating here from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. Accordingly, we have taken all necessary security precautions to ensure that there are no untoward incidents and everybody can cast their votes freely and without fear,” Director General of Police (Anti-Corruption Bureau) A. N. Roy, who is in charge of poll security, told media persons Monday evening.
Central paramilitary forces, the state Reserve Police Force and other security agencies shall help the Maharashtra Police maintain security during assembly elections in the state Tuesday, he said.
“Nearly 80 percent of the state police have been deployed only for election duty. Besides them, other security personnel have been deployed in the sensitive, hyper-sensitive and critical areas, including the Maoist-affected regions of eastern Maharashtra,” said Roy.
The tight security everywhere comes in the wake of last Thursday’s Maoist attack in Gadchiroli, in which 17 policemen were killed as well as over a dozen incidents of poll-related violence in which candidates or political workers of different parties were attacked in the past few days,” he said.
Roy said the forces under deployment would ensure that they reach any trouble spot within 15 minutes. “We have ensured that there is at least one police officer in each of the polling centres across the state,” he said.
Nearly 760 million voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in 84,136 polling stations across the state to elect 288 representatives from the 3,559 contenders, including 211 women, in the fray.
As a precautionary measure, police have initiated action against 58,474 people under various charges, and 468 cognisable and 719 non-cognisable offences have been registered in the state.
A total of 27,413 licensed and 400 illegal weapons have been seized prior to the polls, said Roy.