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Chief Secretary likely to be grilled by EC today

Special Correspondent

150 companies of Central forces for byelection duty

EC may ask P. Ramakanth Reddy why four policy decisions were taken by State
EC expected to further clarify the model code of conduct to the Chief Secretary

HYDERABAD: The Election Commission on Thursday gave its green signal for making available 150 companies of Central forces like CRPF, BSF and CISF for byelection duty in Andhra Pradesh. Each company will have roughly 100 personnel.

Apart from the regular State police, deployment of this huge Central force in Andhra Pradesh has become necessary as a record number of 2,635 out of 8,891 polling station areas in the 10 districts where the exercise will take place, have been identified as hypersensitive or sensitive or prone to troubles from extremists.

Over 470 polling stations will be located in Warangal, Ranga Reddy, Medak, Nalgonda, Vizianagaram and Nizamabad districts.

Uniformed men

Chief Electoral Officer I. V. Subba Rao told reporters here on Thursday that the 10 companies of uniformed men, which the Andhra Pradesh government provided to the Election Commission for deployment in Karnataka for conduct of elections there, would join the forces here for the bypolls.

Meanwhile, Mr Rao and Chief Secretary P. Ramakanth Reddy are leaving for New Delhi to attend a meeting being held at Nirvachan Bhavan on Friday.

The Chief Secretary is likely to be asked by the Commission at the meeting slated for 11 am, to clarify as to why four policy decisions were taken by the government even while bylection process was on. The Commission with full strength, with the attendance of Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswamy and the two Commissioners, is expected to further clarify the model code of conduct to the Chief Secretary in the presence of Mr. Subba Rao and issue dos and don’ts to make the process free and fair.

Sources said Deputy Election Commissioner in-charge of law and order N. Balakrishnan will have a separate meeting at 3 pm with the CEO and A. K. Khan, additional DG, Law & Order, to review the security arrangements.

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