Director General of Police (DGP) Rajiv Kumar on Monday gave credit to the team work carried out by the State police and other Government agencies, including the Election Commission for conducting the staggered five-phase Assembly without reports of a single incident carried out by the Maoists in Jharkhand.
Talking to The Pioneer, Kumar also maintained that the strategy adopted by the police was similar to that adopted during the recently held Parliamentary elections. “But they made it a point to make no mistake this time which finally led to the peaceful conduct of polls without any untoward incident taking place during the entire poll process,” he added.
“Our strategy was similar to the one adopted during the parliamentary elections but this time no mistakes were done as was done during the parliamentary elections by the DC and the SP of Dumka resulting into the killing of eight polling officials, including five policemen,” said Kumar. “During these elections, I made it a point to personally visit each and every district headquarters, discussing security deployment as well as the measures being taken against the Maoists in detail,” the DGP added. “The strategy we had put in place was proved to be effective,” said the DGP.
“Furthermore, preparations for the polls were started much before the election process was started in the State conducting anti-Naxal operations in the left-wing extremism (lWE) affected areas leading to arrest of Maoist cadres, including some high ranking leaders and recovery of firearms in huge quantity from them,” Kumar said. “As extensive anti-Naxal operations were conducted in the Maoist strongholds, area of their influence got shrunk leading to high percentage of voters’ turnout even in some of the badly-hit Naxal-infested areas as people came out of their homes without any fear in their minds,” added the DGP.
Kumar further added that the district police, IGs DIGs, IG operations as well as the paramilitary forces and other officials did a commendable job and contributed to conduct the elections peacefully in the state. The DGP, however, asserted that greater deployment of security forces was done this time than the Parliamentary elections as more companies of paramilitary forces were provided to the state.
“Moreover, perfect coordination was displayed between the paramilitary forces and the state police and timely inputs provided by the intelligence agencies like IB and CID led to the crackdown on the Naxal cadres in the State,” he signed off.