State Police chief Loknath Behra on Saturday informed that the Kerala Police is fully geared to provide all the security on April 6, the polling day and has posted 59,292 police officials for duty. 481 police stations in the state have been divided into 142 sub-divisions and are under the direct control of the 14 district police chiefs. Of the 59,292 police officials, it includes 24,788 special police officers and comprises 258 deputy superintendents of police, 784 inspectors and 4,405 sub inspectors, said Behra. Apart from the Kerala Police officials, there are 140 companies of CISF, CRPF and BSF officials and this is the biggest deployment of central forces in any election in the state.
Read more about Cong releases list of 86 candidates for Kerala Assembly polls on Business Standard. The Congress on Sunday released its first list of 86 candidates for the upcoming Kerala assembly elections
As the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are yet to announce their candidate lists for the upcoming Kerala Assembly polls, the media is raking up many names. One name which the media has raised in each and every state election is that of superstar Mammootty and this time, too, it is no different. This speculation had a shelf life till the Communist Party of India (Marxist) released its candidate list. Asked about his political leanings, Mammootty said he clearly has a political leaning but till now he has not been asked to contest the upcoming Assembly elections. There is lot of freedom for the media reporters when it comes to naming probable candidates of political parties and the ground rule is nothing but to run his/her imagination wild and come out with names which create a buzz. The moment one TV channel comes out, the others are also not far behind and finally when it comes to the actual candidate list, a huge majority of the hyped names that were doled out
The Kerala Congress (Joseph) group, an ally of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) on Saturday announced the candidate list for the April 6 state Assembly election with party supremo P J Joseph fighting the poll from Thodupuzha constituency. Senior leaders Advocate Monce Joseph MLA, K Franscis George, Thomas Unniyadan are contesting from Kaduthuruthy, Idukki and Irinjalakuda constituencies. M P Joseph, son-in-law of former minister and Kerala Congress supremo, K M Mani, is contesting from Trikaripurconstituency. The UDF leaders had yesterday announced that as per the seat sharing agreement, 10 seats have been allocated for the Joseph faction of Kerala Congress. Kerala Congress (M) had last year severed its three- decade-old ties with the opposition UDF and joined the CPI (M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF), however, a faction led by senior leader Joseph remained with the UDF.