Election Commission Announces Poll Percentage for Tamil Nadu Amid Criticism
Chennai: After dithering over the final poll percentage for Friday’s elections, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced on Saturday that 69.46 percent of the votes were polled at the State level with Chennai Central recording the lowest percentage of 53.91 and Dharmapuri the highest percentage of 81.48.
Chief Electoral officer Sathyabrata Sahoo came under criticism from media persons who wanted to know the reason for the ECI releasing different figures at different points of time on polling day – 72.9 % first and then revising it to 67 % past midnight – that he cancelled two press conference scheduled for Saturday, first at 11 am and then at 1 pm, to avoid another faux pas.
Citing the lapse in tabulating the figures and communicating them to the Chennai office on time by the district election officers as the reason for the final percentage changing, he said that he would get the final figures and then issue a press release.
The EVMs, however, were sealed and safely transported to the strong rooms at the various counting centres across the State on Friday night itself and locked up amidst heavy security. Under the close watch of party representatives, officials kept the sealed EVMs in the strong rooms that were also sealed with armed personnel of the Central Armed Security Forces posted outside.
Providing backup security were the Tamil Nadu Special Police, Armed Police and the police personnel from the local stations, who have been posted on shift basis, an exercise that would continue till the strong rooms are opened on polling day on June 4.
In Chennai, the EVMS of Central Chennai constituency are locked in the strong room in Loyola College, those of North Chennai in Queen Mary’s College and that from South Chennai in College of Engineering Guindy, in Anna University premises. Each of the counting centres had been fitted with 40 to 60 CCTV cameras with police personnel keeping a watch from the control rooms.
All the major political parties have deployed their workers to keep a watch over the strong rooms from designated spots in all the venues. The party workers are also assigned duty round the clock on shift basis and special passes are issued by the authorities for those taking up the job at the counting centres.
Candidates, their representative and election department and police officials are entitled to visit the counting centres to ensure that the strong rooms were safe and secure. On Saturday, South Chennai BJP candidate, Tamilisai Soundararajan, visited the Anna University premises. When asked about the low turn of voters – her constituency polled just 54.27 % of votes – she told media persons that one of the reasons was that it was a Friday.
Whenever polling happened on a Friday or Monday, the polling percentage would drop because many people would take a long weekend and leave the city to go to their native places or on holiday. She had earlier drawn the attention of authorities to the issue, she said.
The demands raised for re-election in booths that witnessed skirmishes over missing names in the voters’ list and also where people boycotted the polls en masse over various demands and had been referred to the ECI that will take a final call on them, election department source said.
Tamilisai Soundararajan wanted a re-election at a booth in Austin Nagar in Teynampet that fell under her constituency as DMK men chased the BJP workers out of the booth at around 4.30 pm and cast fake votes. But the DMK had also filed a complaint of BJP workers using caste names against its members.
AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami called upon his party workers to keep a vigil over the strong rooms in the counting centres on Saturday, while DMK President M K Stalin had also made the same appeal to his cadre.
