Some of our polling parties have to travel over 40 km for three days through hilly and difficult terrains infested by militants and Naxalites to reach on time. We initiated a new and elaborate communication plan, perhaps unique in the world, called Communication for Election Tracking (COMET) by which each of the 8,28,804 polling stations was connected. We had phone numbers and back-ups, VHF and high frequency sets for areas that did not have mobile phone networks and more than 100 satellite phones borrowed from the Ministry of Defence and Home Ministry.

Security was a major concern and there was a demand for central police forces as people consider them to be more reliable. We used nearly one lakh security personnel for each phase. The movement of security forces itself is a mind-boggling exercise and we had to run 90 special trains, besides 500 coaches attached to normal trains to carry our security forces across the country. Charting out their deployment plans is also a huge exercise.

We have special voting facilities for displaced people, camp voting facilities for refugees of Jammu and Kashmir at three places outside the state. We also had camps in Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Nagaland and Madhya Pradesh. In Kandhamal, we had six camps and there was 90 per cent polling as a result of our security arrangements.

Given problems like Maoist attacks, the separatists of Manipur and J&K, the trouble in dacoit-infested areas of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Rajasthan, besides criminals in many areas we have introduced a new concept of ‘Vulnerability Mapping’, initiated since the Uttar Pradesh elections.

... contd.