CHENNAI: Ruling AIADMK on Thursday urged the State Election Commission (SEC) to conduct elections to local bodies soon but opposition DMK wants the polls to be notified only after completing delimitation process in the newly created districts. Besides, most parties which took part in an all-party meeting, chaired by State Election Commissioner R Palaniswamy, demanded a single-phase election to avoid irregularities, but AIADMK left this aspect to SEC’s discretion.
“Already, delimitation of territorial wards of village panchayats, panchayat unions and district panchayats have been notified. Notwithstanding the notification to bifurcate districts, the process started to conduct the elections, will be continued. After the elections, the process of modification, if any, will be taken up. Delimitation should be carried out not only for new districts but for nine districts, including the districts from which the new ones have been created. It will take at least three to four months. Hence the decision to hold the elections with the delimitation,” official sources clarified.
With regard to use of EVMs in rural local bodies too, official sources said “Possibilities are less this time. EVMs are to be used on an experimental basis only in Melpuram panchayat union in Kanniyakumari district.”When the parties demanded that elections should be conducted based on fresh electoral rolls to be released soon by Election Commission after summary revision, SEC is said to have clarified that the polls would be conducted as per the existing rolls as holding elections based on updated rolls will take much time.
Deputy Speaker of the State Assembly, Pollachi V Jayaraman who attended the meeting said, “We have urged SEC to ensure that the civic elections are conducted soon and pointed out that certain political parties are trying to stall the elections by moving the court. SEC should be vigilant enough to thwart any attempt by the principal opposition party in getting a stay order using legal loopholes.”
DMK representatives R Girirajan and NR Elango said “We too want elections soon and SEC not to give room for legal loopholes to get a stay order against the elections. But, we insist that notification should be made only after completing the delimitation process in the newly-created districts. We also insist that EVMs and VVPAT should be used in rural local bodies too and that a Central government officer should be appointed as observer in each block. Besides, we also demanded a single-phase elections. However, SEC did not give any satisfactory answer to our demands.
“In rural local bodies, each voter would be casting four votes and these votes should not be collected in one single box. Instead, four boxes should be placed. If this process is not adopted, there will be big violence during the elections and there will be law and order issues. CCTVs should be installed in all polling booths and as well as in counting centres, they said.M Jai Shankar (BJP), Alagapuram R Mohanraj and R Parthasarathy (DMDK), R Damodaran and SK Nawaz (Congress) S Elumalai (CPI) and K Udhayakumar (CPM) were among those who attended the meeting.