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Sensitive and Hyper Sensitive Booths in Kerala Election

Tuesday, 2nd May, 2006

They obviously hold their political views passionately in Kerala - in the two northern districts of Kannur and Kasaragod tomorrow 10,000 police will be on duty to supervise at "sensitive" and "hyper sensitive" polling booths.

Reinforcements have been brough in from outside the state for the supervisory task - police personnel drawn from the Rajasthan Armed Constabulary, 11 companies from the Karnataka State Reserve Police, three companies from the Tamil Nadu Special Police, one company from the Andhra Pradesh Special Police and two companies from the Haryana Armed Police.

All the 2,274 polling centres in Kannur and Kasaragod districts have been declared "sensitive" or "hyper sensitive" - an official euphemism to mean that they could witness violence.

A total of 2.4 million voters are eligible to elect 15 legislators from among 85 candidates. The main contest is between the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and the opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF). The LDF, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), holds 10 of the 15 seats.

Tomorrow's voting is described locally as "the third phase" of the election. Voting in six southern districts was held on 22 April when the deployment of 25,000 police personnel and 25 companies of security forces from neighbouring states resulted in no untoward incidents being reported.

The second phase of voting covering Ernakulam, Thrissur, Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode and Wayanad districts was held on April 29. - also without major incident.

Votes for all three phases will be counted on 11 May