HYDERABAD: The Election Commission of India is not looking favourably at the proposal to use mine drones with cameras for surveillance of polling booths and electronic voting machines during the forthcoming assembly election since the state police have raised security concerns.The companies that conducted drone surveillance during the 2014 elections in Jammu and Kashmir and panchayat elections in Odisha recently met Telangana chief election officer Dr Rajat Kumar and gave a presentation on the subject. Based on this interaction, Rajat Kumar had sought the police’s opinion on the feasibility of drone surveillance in Telangana.Dr Rajat Kumar told TOI: “The Telangana Police said use of drones was not desirable from a security viewpoint. It is difficult to identify which is an official drone or not; which has been given permission or not. It would be a complicated thing. So, we are not looking favourably regarding the use of drones for elections. We are using advanced data analytics to clean up electoral rolls and sophisticated EVMs and VVPATS. We are using several IT applications too.”A top police official said: “Drones are banned in Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rahcakonda and other areas in Telangana. We will not be able to identify for what purpose the drones would be used. We can’t neutralise any suspicious drones. The use of drones poses a security risk.”In April 2018, Hyderabad police had banned the use of remotely controlled drones, para-gliders and remotely controlled microlight aircraft in the city limits without prior permission of police due to security reasons. Hyderabad CP Anjani Kumar had issued a notification using the city police act. Police said since the security forces could read all locations in Telangana during the election, the use of drones was not necessary. The policemen will be armed with handheld cameras.

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