The district administration is conducting a mock security drill along the nearly 50 km-long coast on December 18 and 19 to spread awareness among the people, fishermen in particular, about anti-national activities carried out from the sea.
The exercise will involve personnel of the Coast Guard, Fisheries Department, and marine police, according to Joint Collector N. Yuvaraj.
Addressing media persons here on Tuesday, Mr. Yuvaraj said the security drill was intended to prepare coastal communities for any eventuality arising from the sea like what happened in Mumbai in November 2008.
Instructions
The Central government had issued instructions to step up vigilance along the coast by mainly involving the fishermen to whom biometric identity cards were sought to be issued.
Due focus was accordingly laid on manning the coastline with their cooperation. The district has two marine police stations at Nizampatnam and Suryalanka covering five coastal mandals – Bapatla, Karlapalem, Nizampatnam, Pittalavanipalem, and Repalle – comprising 35 villages. Tenali RDO S. Srinivasa Murthy and Bapatla DSP Bhaskar were present.
Mr. Yuvaraj said Guntur district received the second largest number of applications (1,82,717) for registration of new voters after Ranga Reddy.
Twenty-five per cent of the applications have so far passed scrutiny and the remaining would be done before January 15 when the final list of voters would be published.
