With the Naxal-hit Bastar region going for Assembly polls on Monday, security forces have been directed to sanitise school buildings and other premises to be used for polling in hyper-sensitive areas.
The other precautionary orders given to security forces, particularly to those who have arrived from other states for conducting polls, are not to venture in the forest areas in search of mobile phone signals and to go to washrooms with security cover, a senior police official said on condition of anonymity.
Maoists can take advantage of such a situation to launch an attack on police personnel, as they have did in the past, he said. Security forces have been strictly instructed to conduct de-mining exercise inside school premises being used for polling before entering there, the official said.
"Not only the ground but walls and blackboards in schools are also to be checked as Intelligence Bureau has tipped off that IEDs could be planted anywhere," he said. Several other general instructions are also issued to them as a precautionary measure, he said. The paramilitary personnel, who have arrived from other states, are not very well versed in counter-insurgency operations and unaware of the critical situation in the Maoist-hotbed of Bastar. Therefore, such instructions are required, he said.
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