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Security blanket in place as Bihar, UP go to the polls on Saturday

Security personnel armed with sten-guns mounted vigil while police patrols started doing the rounds as voters in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh prepared to go to the polls on Saturday to elect 78 members of the 13th Lok Sabha.

It is the first phase of the general election in violence-prone Bihar and UP in the Hindi heartland. Thirty constituencies, half of them identified as hypersensitive, spread over 32 districts would go to the polls in UP.

More than 33.6 million voters are eligible to exercise their franchise to decide the fate of 426 candidates who are in the fray in this phase in the state.

Some wellknown candidates in the fray include Dr Murli Manohar Joshi from Allahabad, Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav from Kannauj, Phoolan Devi from Mirzapur and Raj Babbar from Agra.

The UP government has identified 16 districts covering these constituencies as hypersensitive while nine have been identified as sensitive. The hypersensitive districts include Aligarh, Agra, Allahabad, Chandauli, Etah, Etawah, Fatehgarh, Hamirpur, Kannauj, Kanpur Nagar, Mahoba, Mainpuri, Mirzapur, Pratapgarh, Ravidas Nagar, Sant, and Varanasi. Among the sensitive constituencies are Auriya, Banda, Bulandshahr, Ferozabad, Jalaun, Kanpur Dehat, Mathura and Saharanpur.

Principal secretary, home, V K Mittal said 300 companies -- 180 Provincial Armed Constabulary and 128 para-military forces -- have been deployed in the state for the smooth conduct of polling. Besides, forest guards, over 100,000 Home Guards and 7,600 National Cadet Corps cadets will also be pressed into service.

A total of 22,311 polling centres and 43,973 polling booths will function in this phase of elections, he added.

Nineteen Lok Sabha constituencies will go to the poll in the first phase in Bihar. State Home Commissioner U N Panjiyar said that instructions had already been issued to the administration in the concerned districts to start intensive patrolling to prevent any untoward incident. He said the authorities had been asked to open check posts at important entry points after sealing the international border with the state.

Panjiyar said special attention was being given to the extremist-infested areas in the wake of the poll boycott call given by the two banned ultra-left organisations -- the People's War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre. He said the Centre had sanctioned 119 companies of armed police force for the state.

Nearly 50 per cent of the 29,169 polling booths for the first phase had been identified as sensitive and supersensitive.

The state government has decided to deploy 127 companies of the Bihar Military Police and 2,000 personnel from the government railway police in addition to the existing police force of the respective districts for election duty. The central forces that will be deployed in 19 constituencies of south and central Bihar comprise 27 companies of the Central Reserve Police Force, 20 companies of the Border Security Force, 22 companies of the Central Industrial Security Force and seven companies of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. Sources said the rest would be drawn from the Railway Protection Force (13 companies), the Punjab Armed Police (10 companies), the Haryana Armed Police (five companies) and the Tamil Nadu Military Police (five companies).

Aurangabad, Chatra, Dhanbad, Dumka, Gaya, Giridh, Godda, Hazaribagh, Jamshedpur, Jehanabad, Khunti, Koderma, Lohardagga, Nawada, Ranchi, Palamau, Sasaram, Singhbhum and Vikramganj will go to the poll on Saturday.

Elaborate security arrangements, including aerial surveillance by helicopters in the Naxalite areas, have been made in 14 out of the 40 Lok Sabha constituencies going to polls in the second phase of polling in Madhya Pradesh on September 18.

A police spokesman said in Bhopal that helicopters would be pressed into service in Sarguja (ST) Lok Sabha constituency bordering Bihar, where Naxalite outfits like the Maoist Communist Centre and Party Unity are active.

Among the other 13 constituencies going to polls on September 18, the police headquarters has classified Bhopal, Hoshangabad, Rewa and Satna as sensitive. Bhopal and Hoshangabad are being considered sensitive in view of the presence of heavyweights in the fray while caste tension was the main problem being faced in Rewa and Satna constituencies of the Vindhya region.

The BJP's firebrand leader and Union Minister of State for Sports and Youth Welfare Uma Bharati is locked in a tough contest with Congress Seva Dal president Suresh Pachauri in the communally sensitive Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency. Former Union minister Aslam Sher Khan is also testing his electoral fortunes as a candidate of the Nationalist Congress Party.

The administration is also not taking any chances in Hoshangabad where BJP vice-president Sunderlal Patwa is contesting against former state minister Rajkumar Patel.

In Rewa, state speaker Sriniwas Tiwari's son Sunderlal Tiwari is locked in a keen contest with Chandra Mani Tripathi of the BJP and Ram Lakhan Patel of the BSP. The Election Commission had earlier removed some officials, including some policemen, following complaints against them.

Apart from law and order problems, the administration is also worried over the forecast of heavy rains in Madhya Pradesh during the next couple of days.

All eyes are on the Lok Sabha and assembly constituencies located in the Telengana region of Andhra Pradesh which will go to the third and final phase of elections on September 18, in view of the poll boycott call given by the Naxalite People's War Group.

More than 17.5 million voters are eligible to exercise their franchise to decide the electoral fortunes of 818 candidates involved in the final phase.

While 108 candidates are in the field for the 14 Lok Sabha seats, 710 aspirants are vying for the 98 assembly seats.

The PWG recently stepped up attacks on police personnel and peoples' representatives in a bid to focus attention on their boycott call.

The PWG gunned down sitting MLA P Purushothama Rao who was a ruling TDP nominee for Sirpur assembly seat and three of his gunmen on Wednesday sending shock waves in Adilabad district.

Director General of Police H J Dora reviewed the situation with the top police brass of the affected districts and urged them to take adequate security measures to check Naxalite activities.

The authorities made special security arrangements in more than 2,000 villages identified as Naxalite affected. Of these 608 are in Warangal, 429 in Medak, 386 in Nalgonda, 134 in Nizamabad, 115 in Adilabad, 112 in Guntur, and 75 in Khammam.

In view of the Naxal threat, additional police companies, including paramilitary forces like Border Security Force and Rapid Action Force, have been deployed in the affected villages.

Among the prominent candidates whose fate will be decided tomorrow are S Jaipal Reddy, who is the Congress nominee for Miryalaguda Lok Sabha seat, firebrand parliamentarian Renuka Chowdhury (Congress) from Khammam, senior Congress leader M Baga Reddy from Medak and BJP state unit president Ch Vidyasagar Rao who is seeking re-election from Karimnagar.

The 14 Lok Sabha constituencies going to the polls on Saturday are Bhadrachalam, Vijayawada, Guntur, Siddipet, Medak, Nizamabad, Adilabad, Peddapalli, Karimnagar, Hanamkonda, Warangal, Khammam, Nalgonda and Miryalaguda.

In Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency, the authorities have decided to deploy 120 more companies of BSF, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police in addition to the forces already posted for counter-insurgency operations.

A total of 7,62,237 voters, including 3,34,485 women, are eligible to exercise their franchise to choose their representative from among the ten candidates from the constituency spread over 15 assembly segments of the twin border districts of Kupwara and Baramulla.

''We have made all necessary arrangements to meet any eventuality in case Pakistani troops resorted to firing or shelling,'' a spokesman of the election office in Baramulla said. ''Some of the polling stations that were close to the border and directly exposed to Pak shelling have already been shifted to reasonably safe places,'' he added.

Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and Director General of Police Gurbachan Jagat have confirmed that about 1000 militants, mostly foreigners, have sneaked in from Pakistani Occupied Kashmir to disrupt the polls and also cause large-scale disturbances.

UNI

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