CHENNAI: The DMK on Monday petitioned the Election Commission of India (ECI) to designate the areas where “strong rooms” housing EVMs are located as “drone no-fly zones,” besides ensuring uninterrupted CCTV coverage of the rooms.
The appeal comes in the backdrop of an incident regarding malfunctioning of CCTV cameras for approximately 20 minutes in the strong room containing the EVMs for the Nilgiris parliamentary constituency.
In the complaint lodged with the ECI and Chief Electoral Officer, DMK’s organising secretary RS Bharathi highlighted that as per ECI’s norms, the representatives of the candidates are present on the campuses where strong rooms are kept, but they do not have permission to enter the inner perimeter.
The party further added the only way to ensure the strong rooms are secure is through CCTV, for which the political parties have been given permission to monitor any time.
DMK urged the ECI to ensure the CCTV coverage is “not interrupted for whatsoever reasons including technical, electrical, electrical among others”.
DMK’s advocates wing secretary and RS MP NR Elango, who submitted the petition, told TNIE they want the area to be ‘drone no-fly zone’ as they suspect some drones could interrupt with the functioning of CCTV.
On the malfunctioning of CCTV in Nilgiris, he said, “Our agent saw the seals of the strong room and there is no evidence of tampering.”