Road to Lok Sabha polls: 6 states participate in inter-state police coordination meeting

In a bid to ensure peaceful elections, an inter-state coordination meeting of senior police officials of six states was held in Bhubaneswar on Friday.

DG and ADGs from Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana, West Bengal, and Odisha attended the meeting, in addition to Odisha DGP RP Sharma, Additional Chief Secretary of Home Department - Government of Odisha, CRPF IGP (Odisha), BSF IGP (Odisha) and DIG intelligence (Odisha).

Police officials of the six neighbouring states discussed several law and order issues including the flow of illegal money, liquor, Maoist activities, security arrangements in affected areas and Intelligence sharing to develop more impact full inter-state cooperation to tackle the challenges and holding smooth upcoming general election 2019.

"We already have an institutionalised mechanism for inter-state coordination in Police, today we had special coordination meeting in view of the coming election, and focus was on to deploy joint forces for tackling Left Wing Extremism (LWE) menace, movement of narcotics, movement of cash and movement of criminals. We will focus on increasing our communication and joint operations," said Asit Tripathi, Additional Chief Secretary Home Department, Government of Odisha.

Meanwhile, Sharma added, "We have good cooperation with neighbouring states in terms of intelligence sharing, joint operations but such meetings are necessary before the elections to discuss the emerging challenge and the solution for that, we have identified certain areas where we have to coordinate so that peacefully election will be conducted".

The Lok Sabha elections are expected to take place in April-May this year.