Centre asks 12 states to send forces to Bengal for rural polls

KOLKATA: The Centre on Thursday wrote to 12 states asking them to immediately dispatch 115 companies of their State Armed Police or Indian Reserve Battalions to Bengal for the panchayat polls, report Debashis Konar & Subrata Chattoraj.

The Centre has asked Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to provide 20 battalions each to Bengal; Maharashtra, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha 10 battalions each, and Tripura, Mizoram, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Meghalaya to provide five battalions each.These 115 battalions are in addition to the Centre sending 200 battalions of CRPF, BSF, CISF, ITBP, SSB and RPF to Bengal.

On Friday, the State Election Commission submitted to the Calcutta High Court that it had requisitioned the Union home ministry for the balance of 485 companies of central forces in addition to the 315 CAPF companies asked for earlier. SEC senior advocate Kishore Dutta, during the hearing of a contempt petition, submitted that the commission had already requisitioned 800 companies of central forces. The counsel submitted that the figure was over and above the 22 companies of CRPF already sanctioned by the MHA.

A division bench led by Chief Justice T S Sivagnanam noted that forces requisitioned from the Centre for the upcoming panchayat polls were higher than in the 2013 elections, which were held in five phases. "Needless to say, the assessment of the state election commission is paramount. If forces are not adequate, the SEC shall not fight shy to make additional requisition of forces," the bench observed.