The State Election Commission on Friday reposed faith in Bengal police to conduct polls to four municipal corporations, including Bidhannagar, where voting will be held on Saturday.

For the first time in Bengal, special commandos, as well as Eastern Frontier Rifles and Special Task Force personnel, will be engaged to extend support to the Bengal police to ensure a free-and-fair poll in Bidhannagar where the BJP had demanded deployment of central forces.

The BJP had also filed a petition before Calcutta High Court seeking an order to direct the state election commission (SEC) to deploy central forces in Bidhannagar. The SEC has, meanwhile announced to increase total number of security personnel to 4,000. On Friday evening, state election commissioner Sourav Das visited Salt Lake to take stock of poll arrangements.

Calcutta High Court on Friday dismissed an appeal of an individual petitioner who sought modification of its Thursday order in which the court had directed the SEC to hold a joint meeting with the chief secretary and home secretary, as well as the director-general and inspector general of police, within 12 hours and to decide whether deployment of central paramilitary forces will be required for the peaceful conduct of poll to the Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation.

The petitioner had demanded exclusion of the chief secretary from the meeting, which the court rejected. Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court Justice Prakash Shrivastava remarked that the court had not directed the chief secretary alone to take any decision, instead the chief secretary along with other officials of the Bengal government had to jointly decide in consultation with the SEC.

The division bench also underscored that in case the SEC decided that no such deployment of central forces was required, in that situation the commission would be liable for any untoward incident during the poll.

Eventually the commission as directed by Calcutta High Court, held a meeting on Friday afternoon, and decided to deploy Bengal police not just in Bidhannagar, rather in all the four corporations to maintain law and order as well as to ensure free and fair polls.

At the same time, dedicated teams of CID and Intelligence branch will be on mobile surveillance in all the hyper-sensitive areas, SEC sources said after a meeting on security arrangements for the polls on Friday afternoon.

The SEC has also decided to appoint an IG level officer to monitor the law-and-order situation in each of the four corporations where elections will be held on Saturday.

"The decision to deploy state police and senior level officers as well as engagement of special task force personnel have been taken examining the ground realities," a commission official said.

As per decision taken at the meeting, Gyanwant Singh, who is the additional director general of STF, CID, has been assigned special responsibility to look after law-and-order situation. Ananda Kumar, inspector-general of CID, has been entrusted the job of security arrangements for the Bidhannagar civic polls to ensure strict measures to avert any untoward incident.

Similarly, senior IG North Bengal V.P. Singh will take care of law-and-order situation on poll day in Siliguri, while ADG Western Zone Sanjay Singh and IG Bankura range Sunil Kumar Choudhary will be in charge of Asansol and Chandannagore, respectively.