LAHORE: Inspector General of Police Inam Ghani lauded Sargodha Regional Police Officer Ashfaq Ahmad Khan and Khushab District Police Officer Muhammad Naveed over peaceful and successful by-election held in Khushab on May 5.

During a meeting at the Central Police Office on Saturday, Mr Ghani directed the police officers to follow the precedence of the two officers.

An official, close to the information, said many issues of the Punjab police came under discussion during the meeting.

Talking about the elaborated security plan/arrangements in PP-84 Khushab, he said 2,280 police personnel were deployed for the by-election and 450 women police officials were assigned duty to deal with issues of women staff of the election commission and the voters. Of the women staff, 250 were provided by the Gujranwala region and 150 by the Sargodha region.

A sector was housing 40 polling stations manned by six trained Elite police officials and a DSP was additionally assigned job.

These arrangements were other than the deployment of the police in the sector, the police official said who added that a sub-sector was formed for 10 polling stations.

The Khushab police had constituted a quick response team (QRT) after identifying 20 troublesome points in all the 229 polling stations of the district to deal with emergency. Each such team was provided with five reserves of the anti-riot force.

On the polling day, the quick response teams found two incidents of violence. One hundred police personnel of the QRT responded to these two incidents within eight minutes of the complaints and addressed them amicably.

A day before the polling day, RPO Khan and DPO Naveed held briefings with the presiding officers, election candidates and other stakeholders to transport the polling material safely and timely.

The Khushab police also prepared ‘Election Monitoring System App’ and trained the staff in this regard. All the police officials assigned supervisory role in their beats, sectors, sub-sectors and zones were asked to download the App in their android handsets.

The control of the dashboard of the App was with the DPO. Through the App, the DPO updated about nine incidents of minor scuffles between the voters and police was dispatched.

The official said the earlier by-election held in NA-75, Daska in February this year had brought a bad name to the Punjab police when various incidents of violence and rigging were reported.

The Khushab police had studied the in details the flaws in the security arrangements of the Daska police and had come up with the new strategy to hold the election successfully.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2021