Taking lessons from the Naxal attack on Thursday, the State police have deployed two companies of security forces to avoid any untoward incident during the re-poll being done on the two polling stations — 100 and 101 of Asna village at Shikaripara in Dumka tomorrow.
The polled EVMs were destroyed in a Naxal attack after the rebels triggered a landmine blast blowing the vehicle carrying the EVMs and polling party while they were returning to Shikaripara after conducting the polls.
“There will be no dearth of security forces and two companies have been deployed for the re-poll in Dumka,” said DGP Rajiv Kumar. According to Kumar, the district administration has been asked to follow the guidelines strictly during the polls. The forces have been asked to completely sanitize the area, added Kumar. Kumar, however, said that the strategy will be same as followed during the polls in the three phases during the elections as it proved to be quite efficient. The incident of Shikaripara, according to the DGP, was a result of security lapse on the part of the district administration which could have been avoided, if the Standard Operating Procedure would have been followed.
The Election Commission is also keeping a close vigil at Shikaripara re-poll and has directed the state police to beef up the security taking all preventive measures. “We have asked administration to deploy adequate number of security forces during the polls on Monday,” said Chief Electoral Officer PK Jajoria.
According to Jajoria, a total of 1648 voters — 832 males and 816 females will be going for re-poll on the two polling stations. Fresh teams of polling officials have been deployed for the re-poll, he added. As per the notification issued by the Election Commission, polling time has been reduced by one hour from 7 am to 3 pm understandably to give adequate time to the polling officials to reach their destinations safe and sound before sunset.
As many as five policemen along with three polling officials were killed in the incident, injuring several others.The villagers, on the other hand, are terrorized by the sanitization exercise being done by the security forces for last two days. The DSP along with his police force has been camping regularly in the village conducting search operations of each and every house in the area. long Range Patrolling (lRP) is also being done by the security forces round the clock. Four anti-landmine vehicles have also said to have been put to work to along with the security forces.
Meanwhile, questions are being raised over the strategy followed in Dumka in deploying the security forces — CRPF personnel, who were supposed to be deployed in sensitive booths, were posted in the urban areas while the poorly trained district police personnel were sent to the sensitive booths. Sniffing something fishy in the logic of deploying district police personnel at the sensitive booths, the opposition is demanding high level inquiry for the Dumka inicident.
Meanwhile, one crore and 60 lakh was released on Sunday by the Election Commission to be paid to the family members of victims who lost their lives on Thursday after the landmine blast. “The payments are likely to be received by the kin of local victims by tomorrow, while the others will get it very soon,” said Jajoria.