Security beefed up in Delhi for Assembly elections

New Delhi: Ahead of Saturday's Delhi Assembly elections, security has been beefed up in the national capital to avoid any untoward incident during polling and to check misuse of money and liquor to influence voters.

As the number of critical polling booths has increased by 107 since the last Delhi Assembly elections, the number of security personnel has also gone up in the national capital.

In 2013 Assembly polls, there were 634 such critical premises, but this time around, 741 premises have been identified as critical. Of these numbers, poll panel has identified 191 polling stations as highly critical.

While 64,000 police personnel had been deployed on poll duty during last elections, poll panel has not disclosed the exact number this time.

"We are now not in a situation to tell the numbers of police personnel to be deployed in poll duty, but we want to assure that security personnel in comparison to last Assembly poll will be more," Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Chandra Bhushan Kumar said.

Police said that surveillance have been mounted over criminal elements and muscle men, a hawk-eyed vigil is being kept at the border check posts to check smuggling of liquor and trafficking of illegal fire arms, besides transportation of currency.

Efforts have also been made to keep check on people coming to Delhi from Ghaziabad, Noida, Faridabad and Gurgaon, who may cast bogus votes during the polls, sources said.

Delhi police is working in tandem with the police forces of Haryana, Punjab, Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan to keep a check on these activities.

Senior police officials are constantly reviewing the security needs and chalking out plans for peaceful conduct of elections.

All the polling booths which have been identified as critical and hypercritical will have two-layer security, one with state police and the other with Central para military forces.

As many as 95,000 government officials have been roped in for election duty to ensure smooth conduct of the polling process.

The Election Commission has also taken elaborate steps which includes deployment of micro observers and installation of CCTV cameras.