this story originally appeared in on apr 17 2016when shankar mathu gets a complaint call from a tamil nadu resident he follows a prescribed procedure as he puts the phone on hold he quickly verifies the callers location and voting rights in the state the software in his computer then helps him narrow down the exact nature of the complaint defacement of property display of firearms gift distribution liquor and tobacco distribution token distribution et al if it is about gift distribution mathu gives the complainant a few more options is it distribution of cell phones clothes and towels gas cylinders cfl bulbs rice bags or utensils once the complaint is registered in the control room located on the seventh floor of fort st george building in chennai the flying squad stationed nearest to the place of the alleged gift distribution gets an autogenerated text message mathu or any of his 39 colleagues in the control room of the states chief electoral office can check the gpsenabled map on the wall and verify whether the flying squad concerned is actually moving towards the location or not thanks to technology our response time to a complaint has gone down from three hours earlier to three minutes in this election we have about 700 flying squads in tamil nadu but we have taken a call to increase it further also we are deploying 400 incometax officials to conduct raids if necessary says rajesh lakhoni chief electoral officer of tamil nadu adding that a deterrent environment is indispensable to contain the growing menace of cash and liquor used in elections his office has further coordinated with telecom providers to look at mass mobile recharge among voters and also held discussions with traders associations to check tokeninlieuofcash a practice often deployed by candidates to avoid large cash movement during elections a flying squad which comprises a team of enforcers from the police and incometax department is allowed to seize cash beyond rs 50000 carried by one person in a pollbound state in tamil nadu where elections will be held only in the last phase may 16 rs 2405 crore in cash was seized by flying squads till april 12 although some seized cash had been returned after it was proven that the money was not carried for pollrelated reasons the other pollbound states are not lagging behind for example in assam where elections were over on april 11 rs 1233 crore was seized in west bengal where elections are on till may 5 rs 1196 crore in cash was seized whereas in kerala rs 104 crore was seized till april 12poll toll if the seizure during the 2014 parliamentary polls in these four states is considered liquor and ganja are also a big menace particularly in west bengal and assam in west bengal 84 lakh litres of liquor and 1396 kg of ganja were seized in the runup to the lok sabha polls whereas in assam the figure stood at 31 lakh litres