POLITICS

This is History (2496)

Whatever you are, be a good one.

UP Vidhan Sabha elections:  ADG LO Prashant Kumar proves his mettle really a lesson

Elections are the cornerstone of democratic governance and political stability. Maintaining the integrity of the electoral process is a sine qua non for any accountable government.  The seven phases of elections in UP for 403 assembly seats began from January 14 and peacefully concluded on March 7. The state witnessed only 33 cases of violence during the seven-phases of assembly elections compared to 97 in 2017. The post poll scenario in Uttar Pradesh has also been free of violence in contrast to the West Bengal assembly elections which were marked by large scale bloodshed and violence including cases of sexual assault. The tranquillity, during and after the polls in UP, calls for a deeper analysis of the strategy, resources and the key people behind it.  As far as the strategy is concerned, UP Police laid thrust on massive preventive action which sent a clear cut message to the anti social elements that any attempt to disturb the polling process shall be sternly dealt with. More than fifteen thousand anti-social elements were identified who could have orchestrated violence during the elections. Preventive action was undertaken against such elements and they were kept under special surveillance. More than 33 lakh people were bound down under 107/116 CrPC for keeping peace, 186 arms factories seized & 10277 illegal arms were seized. A dedicated election cell was established at the DGP Hqs which was directly under the supervision of ADG Law and Order, Prashant Kumar. The cell had senior IPS officers working round the clock, looking after deployment & logistics of force and also keeping a tab on the smallest incident across the state. The election cell also closely monitored social media for any actionable inputs.  More than 2 lakh police personnel were deployed in every phase of elections which included 856 Coy. CAPF, around 70,000 civil Police, 33 coy PAC, more than 47000 Home guards etc.  The coordination, deployment, logistics & transportation of a large number of forces is itself a huge challenge which was also seamlessly done under the dynamic leadership of ADG Law and Order, Prashant Kumar.  It cannot be denied that social media has qualitatively changed the dynamics of elections. Even the smallest incident was reported by the opposition parties through pictures and videos on their twitter handles which makes it impossible to suppress any incident. The strong presence of UP Police on social media came as a blessing in disguise during elections as not only all election related tweets were promptly answered & remedial measures undertaken but also election related fake news was promptly rebutted along with concomitant legal action.  In nutshell, the peaceful conclusion of the assembly elections in UP has been no fluke & it has demanded meticulous planning, coordination, supervision, hard work & flawless execution of the plan. This herculean task has been adroitly met by the ever dependable ADG Law and Order UP Prashant Kumar and his team which is being lauded by one and all!

DEBATE

Does the country requires several investigative agencies to deal with economic offences ?

The buzz around is that “CDS” like post - as in Defence  - is in the offing to have a control over all the agencies dealing in economic offences. They include CBI, ED, DRI,CEI and FIU. The Modi Government  had already surprised the defence services by creating the post of “CDS”. Will it be fruitful ?

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