KMC elections today, central forces, drones to keep watch

On Central forces, he said: “The three companies will be tagged with cluster mobiles to keep a watch. From the state pool, 2,800 sub-inspectors or sergeants, 4,099 assistant sub-inspectors, 21,299 armed constables, 387 constables with sticks and 3,000 homeguards have been deployed. These include the 5,000 personnel brought in from the districts.”

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In areas — which will have one to three booths — one S-I or sergeant, one ASI, two armed constables and one constable with stick will be posted for every booth. In case of areas that have four to five booths, four additional armed constables will be deployed. Areas with six booths will get an additional inspector for each booth.

Cossipore, Chitpur, Beleghata, Jadavpur, Patuli and Metirburz were some of the sensitive areas that have been earmarked by the SEC.

Upadhyaya said the SEC, along with the Kolkata Police, was taking all necessary steps to prevent any untoward incident. “For tomorrow, an SMS-based alert system will be in used along with web-based cameras. Vehicles mounted with cameras will be used for web casting… Observers will also alert the Commission if there is any trouble in any area. But there is no concept of micro observer in local body polls,” he added.

With campaigning ending on Thursday at 3 pm, many leaders were found taking to social networking sites to woo voters on Friday.

“Technically, campaigning has ended at 3 pm yesterday but this is also a form of campaigning. The problem is that in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, people can write on your wall or tag you in a post. In that case, how can we hold the person who has been tagged responsible?” said a senior SEC official.

Upadhyaya too admitted that there was confusion regarding the use of social networking sites for campaigning. “We have not received any complaints in this regard and if we do, we will definitely look into it,” he said.