Deciding on concentrated troops deployment for polling stations under threats, the military leadership on Monday approved a security plan for national and regional polls it had earlier formulated in consultations with the election commission and the government.

The security plan envisages a supporting role from the military for augmenting operational strength of law-enforcement agencies, besides following security measures in every district, tribal agency and frontier region on a case-to-case basis.

The military leadership also gave nod to deployment of regular army troops and Frontier Constabulary in six districts of sparsely populated Balochistan to ensure peaceful and uninterrupted elections.

At least 5,000 military men and 10,000 paramilitary soldiers from Frontier Constabulary are being deployed in six sensitive districts of Balochistan: Mastung, Khuzdar, Kharan, Turbat, Panjgur and Noshki.

These developments came during a military commanders’ conference held against the backdrop of a terrifying surge in election-linked terrorist activities in Karachi, Peshawar, Quetta and elsewhere in the country.

Army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani had called the ‘special’ conference of the corps commanders to exclusively discuss security matters for upcoming polls which was the second commanders’ moot in this month and fourth since the last month.

“The conference focused a plan for provision of security for elections. All issues pertaining to troops deployment, as per the discussion with the Election Commission of Pakistan, federal and provincial governments, were considered and a deployment plan was finalized,” a brief military statement issued after the meeting said.

According to an intelligence official, the military command reviewed security situation in 119 districts, seven tribal agencies and six FRs on a case-to-case basis. The review process, the official said, began in the first week of April and was completed by the third week, after which, Monday’s conference was convened.

The respective inputs from the ECP and the caretaker governments at the Centre and provinces were sought on a number of sensitive and highly sensitive polling stations across the country. “We have compared theirs and ours lists. Apart from some exceptions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas, identification findings (on polling stations) generally tallied,” said the intelligence official.

The military marked all polling stations in North Waziristan and 29 in Peshawar as highly sensitive, the official said, adding 156 other polling stations in parts of FATA were also declared as highly sensitive.

Nevertheless, the military is learnt to have not made public details about the polling stations it marked as sensitive due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The Election Commission of Pakistan, a fortnight ago, set up district election security committees which identified as many as 21,326 polling stations as highly sensitive and sensitive. Of them, 10,273 polling stations were categorised as highly sensitive and 11,053 sensitive.

Interestingly an election commission list details Sindh as having the highest number of sensitive polling stations in instead of Balochistan or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where terrorism is on the rise.

According to the list, the province of Sindh has 4,629 highly sensitive and 3,621 sensitive polling stations; Punjab 2,617 and 2,911; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 1,056 and 2,980; Balochistan 1,451 and 1,071; FATA 510 and 459. Besides, 10 polling stations have been marked as highly sensitive and 11 as sensitive in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

Monitoring adds: Reports suggested that the process of armed forces’ deployment in sensitive districts of Balochistan to ensure peaceful and uninterrupted elections has been started.