Colombo, April 7 (Inditop.com) Thousands of police and military personnel will be deployed across Sri Lanka during Thursday’s parliamentary election, an official said.
Combined military and police personnel will be deployed to prevent recurrence of violence that marred the poll campaign since the declaration of the election Feb 9, Xinhua reported Wednesday citing Inspector General of Police Mahinda Balasuriya.
“We will be deploying over 55,000 policemen and over 19,000 troops from the three forces,” Balasuriya told reporters.
In addition, there will be 2,000 elite police special task force troopers on election day duty.
Monitors said over 300 incidents of election related violence have been recorded since February. Most of them were due to intra-party clashes among the candidates of the ruling coalition.
One death was recorded while over 200 people were arrested for perpetrating violence.
Over 14 million people are eligible to vote at over 11,000 polling stations to elect a 225-member parliament for a six-year term.
rounak