With much less presence of Central Armed Police Forces during polls, the State police will be facing a tough time to handle elections in the State.
While the State needs at least 90 companies of Central forces, Odisha has been provided with 32 companies, causing concern for the State police over handling law and order, Left Wing Extremism and poll management during elections.
When neighboring Andhra Pradesh has been provided 150 companies of CAPFs during lections, Odisha has got 32 companies out of which six are the State Armed Police (SAP).
DGP RP Sharma has recently flagged concern over less deployment of Central forces in the Union Government. The Union Home Ministry has been briefed about the requirement of more forces in the State during simultaneous elections of both Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assembly.
With BJD, BJP and Congress fighting the elections neck-and-neck, it is expected that there will be a triangular fight in the State and almost all the 21 Lok Sabha seats and 147 Assembly segments will face similar battle.
Candidates of all the three political parties are getting extended scope for campaign as the State is facing four phases of polling from April 11 to 29.
The atmosphere will be politically surcharged and handling such a situation with the less presence of forces will be quite a daunting task, admit senior officials.
So handling such an elections, the State police need more Central forces, which is in short supply as the Union Government has made much less allocation than the required, said sources.
A senior police official also said that though the MHA has allocated 32 companies in Odisha, the State will give 20 companies of forces to the Centre to be deployed in other States.
So virtually there will be 12 companies of Central forces left to handle such a gigantic polling, which needs much more number of CAPFs, he admitted.
The Union Government is presenting an argument on the issue of deployment of Central forces in the State that the State police are needed to utilize the already deployed 96 Companies of Central Armed Forces in the State.
However, the State police forward the argument that these Central forces are deployed in the Maoist-hit districts and they cannot be withdrawn from their specific jobs of containing the LWE.
These Central forces are deployed in border zones, where movements of Red rebels are to be controlled and anti-Maoist operations are to be conducted and continuous patrolling in these areas is required to be taken up.
So these Central forces cannot be taken out from these areas for deployment in the election assignments, said senior police officials engaged in anti-Maoist operations.
And the State police will be facing multi task like law and order and LWE threat. The Maoists have already sounded for poll boycott. With more numbers of EVMs and VVPATS being deployed, the State police will be deploying more forces for all the EVM strong rooms and counting centers spread over 147 constituencies across the State.
Present availability of Central forces will not be adequate and in fact, the State requires at least 15 more companies of forces, said sources.