CHENNAI: Only about 40 per cent of the total electorate in the State will take part in the elections to rural local bodies scheduled for December 27 and 30. A consequence of this will be that the choice of the electorate in the remaining nine districts and the urban local bodies will be influenced by the outcome of the first phase elections, political party leaders and observers say.
They say this is a unique situation as it is a generally agreed principle to ensure that voting pattern in one area should not be allowed to influence the pattern in other areas to ensure fairness. Political observer T Koodalarasan said “For instance, in parliamentary polls even though elections were conducted across the country in seven phases, votes were counted on a single date. Here, we have polls for local bodies being conducted separately for different areas and this will surely have an impact and cause confusion.”
As per the State Election Commission (SEC)’s schedule, results of the polls conducted on December 27 and 30 will be announced on January 2. Later, polls for the remaining nine districts and urban local bodies will be notified separately. While urban local bodies are generally the most contested, political leaders are concerned over the impact the results of rural local body polls will have on urban electorate.
DMK Rajya Sabha MP RS Bharathi, said, “We have raised our concern before the Supreme Court. But the court has ordered to go ahead with the poll schedule.” A few parties have been demanding that even if the polling is conducted separately, counting and declaration of the results be done the same day.
CPM state secretary K Balakrishnan blamed the move to conduct polling separately for different areas of the State as a “deliberate attempt to influence voters”. “We have raised the demand (for simultaneous declaration of results) with the SEC. But they did not heed to our demand,” he said.
While these issues were already raised before the courts and were overturned, political observer Raveenthran Duraisamy said the SEC could not be legally faulted. “Yes, the reasons why Lok Sabha results are announced simultaneously would apply for local body polls here also.” But, technically speaking, for the areas they have notified the elections now, counting and declaration of results will be only on a single date (January 2). For other areas, they are yet to notify the elections. So, technically, the SEC may be correct.”
Over 55,000 papers filed
Chennai: A total of 1,65,659 nominations were received till Saturday for the rural local body (RLB) elections. Of these, 55,881 were filed on Saturday. Monday is the last date