A joint team of CRPF and Giridih district police defused a 10kg improvised explosive device (IED) ahead of the fourth and final round of panchayat polls in Jharkhand.

The IED had been kept in a can under a culvert in an area near Parasnath Hills of Giridih.

According to sources, the police had received a tip-off about Maoists trying to sabotage the security movement in the last phase of the rural polls a few days ago.

“On Thursday, we had received an alert that Moist had planted an IED under a culvert aimed at blowing it up when the security forces moved through the road towards polling centres to conduct the panchayat polls,” said Giridih SP Amit Renu.

“Based on the information, we had taken the bomb disposal squad and carried out search in all such sensitive areas and detected the IED planted under a culvert between the Maoist-affected areas of Kulhi and Borwapani under Tengrakhurd panchayat in Nimiyaghat thana of Dumri sub-division,” Renu said.

According to the police, the planting of IED was done in these areas as the fourth phase of rural polls are scheduled in the Dumri subdivision on Friday which covers the Parasnath area, a famous religious tourism site.

Meanwhile, around 1,299 panchayats in 23 districts of Jharkhand are set to go to polls in the fourth phase of rural election on Friday.

More than 58.16 lakh voters, including 28.20 lakh women, are eligible to exercise their franchise to decide the political fate of 35,504 candidates.

In the final phase, elections were scheduled to be held for 18,920 posts — 15,875 panchayat members, 1,299 mukhiyas, 1,587 panchayat committee representatives and 159 zilla parishad members.

However, a total of 6,950 candidates have already been declared winners unopposed on posts of 6,811 panchayat members, five mukhiyas, 133 panchayat committee representatives and one zilla parishad member in the fourth phase of the elections, officials at the state election commission said.

Altogether 15,875 polling stations have been set up for the final phase. Of them, 6,785 booths have been declared as sensitive and 4,744 booths hyper sensitive.

Panchayat polls in the state are being held in four phases with the first phase of polls taking place on May 14. The second and third phases were held on May 19 and 24. The counting for the third and fourth rounds will take place on May 31.