Battle for UP: 1,137 cases of poll code violation in 4 phases

The Uttar Pradesh Police have registered as many as 1,137 cases of violation of model code of conduct in the first four phases of elections.

Senior police officers at the DGP headquarters said that not a single incident of violence or clash has been reported during the elections so far.

This has been possible due to advance preparedness of police and heavy deployment of central paramilitary forces.

Meerut tops the list among the districts with 51 cases of poll code violation followed by 45 in Jhansi.

Among commissionerates, Lucknow topped with 26 cases followed by 20 in Kanpur.

Additional Director General (ADG), law and order, Prashant Kumar said that all 1,137 cases will be probed properly as per the evidence.

He also attributed the peaceful conduct in the fourth phase to a month-long advance planning of mapping all communally sensitive and expenditure sensitive constituencies, for maintaining vigilance beforehand.

"Several rounds of briefings were given to all district police chiefs before the start of elections," he said.

"We had also ensured that all the troublemakers, those named in cases of crime, having previous history of electoral offences sign a personal bond or are issued notice and are put behind the bars if the threat persists," the ADG said.

Special arrangements were made for each phase and central armed paramilitary forces were deployed accordingly.

"We also used drones as per the guidelines of the Election Commission," he said.

The Uttar Pradesh Police had also started a 'digital monitoring cell' since campaigning had gone digital. The cell remains functional round-the-clock.

The cell has around 31 policemen headed by an Additional Superintendent of Police (SP) rank officer and its strength was boosted recently with 15 trained personnel being added before the elections, taking the total staff count to 46.