The Centre will send 452 paramilitary companies during the seven-phased elections in Jammu and Kashmir apart from the huge presence of security forces engaged in the counter-insurgency duties in the state.
"The Centre has given consent for the sanction of 452 additional paramilitary companies for security duties in connection with assembly elections in the state," Director General of Police (DGP) Kuldeep Khoda told PTI.
He said each company will have strength of 60 securitymen and deployed for security purposes during elections in the state.
The paramilitary companies, which will be sent for election duties in the state, would be drawn from Border Security Force, Central Reserve Police Force, Special Services Bureau, Indo Tibetan Border Police and the Rapid Action Force.
The state government had made a demand for 625 companies of security forces for election duty in the state. However, due to elections in other five states, only 452 companies of paramilitary forces have been sanctioned for the state, sources said.
The DGP has already visited several districts and police ranges and conducted security review meetings with zonal IGs, range DIGs and district police heads.
He has already asked range DIGs and District Police Chiefs to prepare security control rooms in each district and create facilities for the extra additional paramilitary forces.
The DGP had already asked them to prepare contingency and evacuation plan and undertake sensitisation operation at sensitive places in the districts.
He also impressed on the need for close coordination between police and various wings of the paramilitary forces for holding free, fair and incident-free elections in the state.
There are 8109 polling stations in the state and they would be guarded as per their specifications of sensitive and hyper-sensitive nature, the sources said.
Three-tier security will be made at sensitive places like venues of election rallies and all candidates will get security in the Kashmir valley and troubled areas of Jammu region, they said.
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