At a high-level meeting held at Chhattisgarh police headquarters on Thursday to chalk out strategies for peaceful voting in Maoist-affected Bastar, that goes to polls on April 19, ‘target-based’ operations and inter-state coordination among security forces became the focal point of discussions.
There are indications that air chief marshal Vivek Ram Chaudhary could visit Chhattisgarh in a few days.Election authorities plan to use 10 IAF Mi-17 choppers for polling duties, mainly to fly officials to 156 polling stations in remote Maoist-affected zones. The meeting was chaired by chief secretary Amitabh Jain and attended by CRPF DG, Chhattisgarh DGP and representatives of the ministry of home affairs. Additional chief secretaries/principal secretaries of home and DGPs of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Jharkhand participated in the meeting via video conferencing. So did officials of intelligence agencies, BSF, CRPF and ITBP.