The Election Commission is set to hold a meeting on Monday to begin preliminary calculations on how many Central forces will be required for the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal. Based on experiences from the last few elections, a deployment blueprint will be prepared. In line with this, the Commission has asked the state’s Chief Electoral Officer to carry detailed information on several key aspects.
A crucial meeting on the deployment of Central forces ahead of the Assembly elections will take place on Tuesday at the Election Commission headquarters in Delhi. According to Commission sources, discussions will focus on how many phases the election will be conducted in and the corresponding requirement of central forces. The use of state police personnel during the polls will also be discussed, including how they may be deployed.
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West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Officer, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, has already travelled to Delhi to attend the meeting. The Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar and other senior officials will be present. Apart from West Bengal, the Commission will also meet the Chief Electoral Officers of five other poll-bound states to discuss force deployment.
Focus on sensitive and high-turnout constituencies
According to Commission sources, the meeting is significant as the deployment plan will be based on lessons learned from previous elections. The Commission has sought detailed inputs from the state administration. In recent elections, the Commission had decided to deploy central forces at every polling booth in West Bengal. Similar arrangements are likely this time as well.
However, special attention will be given to politically sensitive booths. Constituencies that have witnessed intense political rivalry in the past and are expected to remain volatile in the upcoming polls will receive additional security. Politically sensitive Assembly segments will also see tightened security arrangements.
The Commission is expected to discuss deployment strategies for areas that recorded over 80 percent voter turnout in the last Assembly or Lok Sabha elections. Constituencies where a single candidate secured more than 70–75 percent of the votes in the previous Lok Sabha polls will also be reviewed.
Issues such as communal and caste-based tension, election-related violence, Maoist-affected regions, crime-prone areas, and constituencies where re-polling had to be conducted earlier will figure prominently in the discussions. An official noted that while Maoist and high-crime areas naturally remain under watch, special emphasis will also be placed on regions with a history of unrest and re-elections.
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Since 2011, the deployment of central forces in West Bengal elections has steadily increased. During the last Lok Sabha elections, more than 1,000 companies of central forces were deployed in the seventh and final phase alone. In that phase, 1,019 companies were stationed in the state which is more than even Jammu and Kashmir.
In previous Assembly elections, apart from central forces, police personnel from other states were also deployed in West Bengal. According to Commission officials, the number of polling phases will be a key factor in determining force strength: fewer phases will require a larger deployment of central forces.
