Quick Response Teams comprising personnel from the Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and Coimbatore District Police have started intensive patrolling on the Tamil Nadu – Kerala border, from Tuesday evening.
A top officer with the district police said that the patrolling would go on till the late hours of May 16 till the completion of polling.
The officer told The Hindu that there are nearly 60 villages along the bordering areas in the stretch between Pillur Dam Police Station limits and Karunya Nagar Police Station limits.
As many as 75 personnel are part of the team and have been divided into five teams of five persons each to cover the forest areas, the officer said.
These teams will be patrolling in three shifts.
According to the officer, the special patrolling was in addition to the other special security measures carried out at the sensitive booths in the border. On Tuesday a flag march was held in the city.
Earlier the personnel took an oath to work towards conducting a fair election.
A flag march was held at Madukkarai in Kinathukadavu Assembly segment, and at Sultanpet in Sulur Assembly segment. The police will be conducting flag marches in a few other places in the next two days.Hundreds of police personnel in the city who would be on election duty cast their votes in postal ballots at the ballot boxes kept at the CSI Girls School on Avinashi Road.
Checks to be intensified
With poll violation complaints flying thick and fast across the 10 Assembly constituencies in the district and the polling date a few days away, the district administration has asked zonal teams too to take up surveillance work. According to sources, starting May 11, the 214 zonal teams will assist the 110 flying squads and static surveillance teams in checking poll code violation and cash movement. The zonal teams would work in shifts and have common mobile numbers.
They will take orders from the control room, check on leads, and search vehicles. The senior officers in the teams had been asked to use mobile phones for video recording the searches and not wait for the video surveillance teams. The decision to deploy the zonal teams was also because the officials suspect that the number of complaints/tip-offs has increased in the past few days and many turned out to be false. This they suspect could be diversionary tactics by political parties to hoodwink zonal and static surveillance teams.
In addition to the zonal teams, the district election officials have also deployed three additional teams each to Pollachi and Thondamuthur for expenditure monitoring after an assessment revealed they were expenditure sensitive constituencies given the profile of candidates in fray.The zonal teams otherwise are engaged in transport of electronic voting machines, logistics management and training of booth level staff.
Ethical voting
A pledge to ensure 100 per cent ethical voting was administered at various places across the 10 Assembly constituencies in the district on Tuesday.
A release from the district administration said that District Election Officer and Collector Archana Patnaik administered the pledge to all staff at the collectorate.
In the Kavundampalayam Assembly constituency, Election Commission of India observer Bharat Chandra Saha administered the pledge at the Kurudampalayam Panchayat office.
In Nehru Stadium, Observer Jothi Kailash administered the pledge to all Coimbatore Corporation staff. In the Pollachi Assembly constituency, Observer Puneet Kumar administered the pledge to staff at the Panchayat Union office there.
The release said that senior officers administered the pledge to staff in their offices and offices of the returning officers, assistant returning officers, booth level officers, at all Central and State governments’ establishments, airport, railway junctions, bus stands and places of public importance.
The release also said that over 13 lakh voters took the pledge at over 6,000 locations.
In The Nilgiris district, Collector P. Shankar administered the ethical voting pledge at the Ooty Central Bus Stand, a release from the district administration.
He administered the pledge to Transport Corporation employees, auto rickshaw and taxi drivers and commuters. Senior district administration officials including Superintendent of Police Murali Rambha were also present.
Poll violation cases
The police have registered a case against a few BJP members on charges of pasting party stickers on VKK Menon Road without getting permission from the authorities concerned.
The police have registered a similar case against BJP members for pasting stickers in HUDCO Colony on Monday.
The police have registered a case against an AIADMK functionary, T. Venkatachalam, on charges of distributing cash near Ayarpadi Hospital on Monday.
The police said that they had registered the case based on a complaint from a DMK member, G. Perumal, with whom Venkatachalam had also had a clash.
Venkatachalam had told the police that a few persons wearing dhoti that showed affiliation to the DMK snatched cash and ATM cards near Ayarpadi Hospital when his friend and he were chatting on Monday afternoon. The police have registered a case based on the complaint.
The police have also registered another case against R. Marimuthu and a few others from the DMK on charges pasting stickers in a car without permission from the authorities concerned.
The Police registered the complaint based on a complaint from the Valparai North village administrative officer.
The police have registered cases against workers from the BJP, Congress, DMK and Tamil Maanila Congress on charges of tying flags at a few places in Mettupalayam town without permission.
