New Delhi:

The Election Commission is expected to deploy 3.4 lakh Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) personnel along with state police forces for the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections and the assembly polls in four states beginning April 19, officials said.

A maximum of 92,000 personnel of CAPFs are likely to be deployed in West Bengal, which sees political violence and where elections will be held in seven phases. The state is followed by 63,500 personnel in militancy-hit Jammu and Kashmir, where polling will be held in five phases.

As many as 36,000 personnel will be deployed in Naxal-affected Chhattisgarh, where polling will be held in three phases.

The EC has considered the requests made by the state Chief Electoral Officers and decided to deploy a maximum of around 3,400 companies of the CAPFs in all states and Union territories in a phased manner to ensure free, fair and peaceful elections, an official privy to the development said.

A CAPF company comprises around 100 personnel. The entire force mobilisation will be completed in the next few days.

Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim will also be held coinciding with the Lok Sabha polls.

A maximum of 920 companies of CAPFs are expected to be deployed in West Bengal in a phased manner, followed by 635 companies in Jammu and Kashmir, 360 companies in Chhattisgarh, 295 companies in Bihar, 252 companies in Uttar Pradesh and 250 companies each in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Punjab, the official said.

The CAPFs are the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and National Security Guard (NSG).

The combined strength of all CAPFs is around 10 lakh.

In other states where a sizeable number of CAPFs are expected to be deployed are: 200 companies each in Gujarat, Manipur, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, 175 companies in Odisha, 160 companies each in Assam and Telangana, 150 in Maharashtra, 113 in Madhya Pradesh, 100 in Tripura among others.

Those forces which will be deployed in West Bengal, Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected areas and Jammu and Kashmir have already reached their respective destinations.

According to the plan, about 2,000 companies were mobilised as part of the pre-poll deployment in sensitive and hyper-sensitive constituencies beginning March 1.

About 1.5 lakh personnel will move through roads and rail as part of this mobilisation, another official said.

The Railways have also made available adequate rolling stocks with all appropriate facilities in trains, thereby ensuring hassle-free and timely movement of the forces to perform election duties.

Officials said the the CAPF personnel are being deployed for poll-related duties, such as area domination, confidence-building measures, poll day-related duties, guarding of electronic voting machines (EVMs) and strong room centres, counting centre security, etc during the elections.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A dog squad demonstrating a few new training techniques. Indian dog breeds Rampur hound, Himalayan mountain canines Himachali shepherd, Gaddi and Bakharwal and the Tibetan mastiff are likely to be deployed soon for police duties like sniffing out suspects, narcotics and explosives, besides patrolling risk-prone areas, officials said.
| Photo Credit: K. Murali Kumar

Indian dog breed Rampur hound, Himalayan mountain canines Himachali shepherd, Gaddi and Bakharwal and the Tibetan mastiff are likely to be deployed soon for police duties like sniffing out suspects, narcotics and explosives, besides patrolling risk-prone areas, officials said.

The Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) like the BSF, CRPF and CISF are all set to recruit Indian dog breeds for police duties as trials of a few such as the Rampur Hound are underway. An order has also been issued for testing the Himalayan mountain canines.

At present, almost all police dogs are foreign breeds like the German Shepherd, Labrador, Belgian Malinois and Cocker spaniel.

“The trial of the Indian dog breed Mudhol hound has already been concluded by the SSB and the ITBP. Trials of a few other Indian dog breeds like the Rampur hound are also undergoing at the canine training centres of the CRPF and the BSF,” a Home Ministry official said.

Besides, the Ministry has also ordered trials of the Himalayan mountain dogs like the Himachali shepherd, Gaddi, Bakharwal and the Tibetan mastiff simultaneously by the Border Security Force (BSF), Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB). The trials are going on now.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has in the past spoken about promoting local dog breeds through scientific means.

All dogs hired by the CAPFs are part of the Police Service K9 (PSKs) squads. The CAPFs which hire and train the dogs for police duties are the BSF, CRPF, CISF, ITBP, SSB, NSG and the Assam Rifles.

Police dogs are trained for tasks like the detection of explosives such as IEDs and mines, narcotics and fake currencies, besides patrolling and others.

Dogs are also sometimes used in search operations to locate terrorists, the official said.

The Home Ministry has also taken a few vital steps to strengthen the culture and ecosystem of mutual learning and cooperation among the CAPFs and other police and law enforcement organisations on the issue of PSKs.

The CAPFs, with nearly 4,000 dogs, are the largest police dog users in the country. Around 300 pups are hired by the CAPFs every year.

Among the CAPFs, the largest number of dogs are with the Central Reserve Police Force (around 1,500), followed by the Central Industrial Security Force (around 700). The counter-terror organisation National Security Guard (NSG) has about 100 dogs, another official said.

The K9 squad was set up by the home ministry as part of its police modernisation programme in 2019 with an aim to streamline the breeding, training and selection of dogs.

Interestingly, all combat dogs of the CAPFs are now undergoing an annual evaluation exercise to assess their efficiency and suitability for their specified tasks like sniffing out suspects, narcotics and hidden explosives, besides patrolling risk-prone areas, the official said.

The Home Ministry, under whose command the CAPFs and several other forces work, has formulated a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the K9 squads of these forces and has directed them to include it in their dog-training curriculum.

“The ambit of internal security was widening, the difference between internal and external security threats was getting narrower, and police and CAPF dogs were an effective force multiplier for ensuring safety and security of the troops in operations and also the citizens,” the official said.

File photo of officials collecting data as part of Census in 2011.
| Photo Credit: MURALI KUMAR K

In an indication that the census exercise — meant to be completed in 2021, but delayed because of COVID-19 — may not be conducted in 2023-24, the Union Budget allocation for the Census Survey and Statistics head has been slashed to ₹1,565 crore from the ₹3,676 crore allocated in 2022-23. The last census was held in 2011.

Overall, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has been allocated ₹1.96 lakh crore in the Budget 2023-24, a 5% hike from the almost ₹1.86 lakh crore allotted to it in the current fiscal.

In her Budget speech on Wednesday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that States must spend the entire fifty-year loan given to them on capital expenditure within the 2023-24 financial year. Parts of the outlay will also be linked to, or allocated for scrapping old government vehicles and housing for police personnel above or as part of police stations, she said.

Intelligence database funding up

The allocation for the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) has been more than doubled, growing a whopping 128% from ₹87.77 crore in 2022-23 to ₹200.53 crore in the coming year. NATGRID is one-stop destination for security and intelligence agencies to access databases related to immigration entry and exit, and the banking and telephone details of terror and crime suspects, using a “secured platform”. The Intelligence Bureau has seen an increase of 7% with an allocation of ₹3,418 crore in 2023-24.

The Official Languages division that promotes the use of Hindi language in official government work has been allocated a budget of ₹93.26 crore.

The Special Protection Group, which only provides security cover to the Prime Minister of India, has seen a 12% increase in budgetary allocation from ₹385 crore to ₹433 crore.

The Indo Tibetan Border Police Force that is deployed along the 3,488 km border with China has seen an 8% increase in its budget from ₹7,461 crore in the current fiscal to ₹8,097 crore in the next fiscal.

Managing border infra, movement

The budget for the Immigration, Visa and Foreigners Registration and Tracking System (IVFRT) has increased 30% from ₹175 crore to ₹229 crore. IVFRT’s core objective is to develop and implement a secure and integrated service delivery framework that facilitates legitimate travellers, while strengthening security.

Border infrastructure and management has seen its budget grow 29%, from ₹2,744 crore in 2022-23 to ₹3,545 crore in 2023-24. The provision is allocated for barbed wire fencing, construction of roads, observation posts and border outposts, installation of flood lights, induction of hi-tech surveillance along the Bangladesh and Pakistan borders, and for other such construction activities at India’s international borders

The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre has been allocated ₹94 crore, almost 60% more than the ₹59 crore allocated the previous year

A large component of the budget, a total of ₹2,092 crore, has been reserved for “research,” which is almost 50% higher than the ₹1,400 crore revised estimates for 2021-22.

The modernisation of the Central Armed Police Forces, newly introduced as a budget head in 2022-23, has seen its allocation fall more than 18% to ₹202 crore, down from the ₹248 crore allotted earlier.

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