What is Election Security going to look like?

The upcoming level elections shall see parties vying against each other in a nationwide, local poll to decide the mayoral and city wide roles for the upcoming years. A historic event in the nation, a total of 17,733,723 voters, 8,741,530 women, 8,992,010 men and 183 registered as ‘others’, are set to appear in polling booths and districts across the Nation to pick their local leaders to represent their wants and needs in their community.

The approximately 18 million voters, almost a 4 million rise to the 14 million voter turnout in the 2017 elections, shall see the voting population spread across 10,756 polling booths across the nation. The sheer behemoth of a task it is to organize the logistics of this event is being undertaken by the Election Commission of Nepal, while the security/ peace keeping aspect of the event is being managed by the nations security forces that range from around 70000 Nepal Police personnel, 60000 Armed Police Forces, 30000 Nepali Army personnel and the approximately 100000 Temporary Police Force.

The National Police is set to deploy in and around 70, 000 security personnel all across the nation to maintain peace and security in what is usually a rather politically charged event. The Kathmandu Valley shall itself see around 6,000 personnel deployed to polling stations to secure and volunteer in these zones. “ We’ve been providing apt training and directives to police all around the nation leading up to the elections and also for during and post election happenings.” says Spokesperson of Nepal Police SSP Bishnu Kumar KC. Even for the approximately 100,00 temporary police that have already been deployed and are to be actively present in and after the elections deployment is already complete and training underway SSP KC adds.

Elaborating further on the roles of the temporary police and the police force as a whole KC tells Nepal News that pre-election the temporary police working in tandem with Nepal Police are learning the ropes and their roles during the event,

                          During the event their roles shall range from maintaining general order and decent to volunteering in helping form and maintain proper queues and ensuring decent behavior in these very queues. They will also be on the lookout for any one trying to encroach the polling booth in any unethical way detrimental to the vote.

After the voting, the Nepal Police is to escort all the vans from the respective polling stations into the designated counting venues in armored motorcades to ensure the security and veracity of the vote.

The 2017 elections although comparatively tame to its predecessors saw, members of parties clash with the police force in various districts of the nation, including Kalikot and Dolakha resulting in the death of a few political activists and party members as they tried to loot the ballot boxes being transported. The police shall look to avoid any repeat of such incidents by studying precedence and taking mitigating airtight security measures for this upcoming local elections.

As for the traffic situation in the nation, the Traffic Police department are strategizing over the numbers and await orders from the Home Ministry over the total number of traffic personnel they are to deploy during the day of the elections. “We’re strategizing and finalizing the plan for Kathmandu district and will have a plan of action for the people and our personnel imminently, until then we are regularly conducting our training programs, which we’re doing in two phases.” says the Assistant Spokesperson of the Kathmandu Valley Traffic Police, Bal Narsingh Rana.

The training the traffic police receive covers a vast mandate of election day security and management elaborates Rana. The traffic personnel are educated on command operatives, communication hierarchy and given their modus operandi for the day many weeks before. “The major training and message passed on to the personnel is by studying, analyzing and strategizing after viewing the happenings of the last election, we look to analyze these events and see where the Department can be better as a whole and look to address it to have a safe and disturbance free election day,’ concludes Rana.