CHENNAI: The Election Commission of India on Wednesday told the Madras High Court that additional cameras will be installed with dedicated lines at the strong rooms where the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are stocked in all Lok Sabha constituencies in Tamil Nadu to ensure uninterrupted functioning of the surveillance systems.
The submission was made by advocate Niranjan Rajagopalan, before a division bench of Justices A D Jagadish Chandira and R Kalaimathi, when a public interest litigation petition filed by advocate and PIL activist M L Ravi came up for hearing.
“All district election officers (DEOs) have been directed to provide one additional CCTV per strong room with a new dedicated line, switch, router, NVR (Network Video Recorder) and a dedicated TV for party agents to view footage even if there are interruptions in the feeds of existing cameras,” the counsel said.
Directing the ECI to furnish a reply to the representation submitted by the petitioner in this regard by Wednesday, the bench closed the petition.
Moreover, the high court bench also questioned the interest of the petitioner in this matter when the contesting political parties themselves had not approached it.
Ravi, in his petition, sought the HC to set up an expert committee under supervision of a retired judge to ascertain the causes behind the recent snags suffered by CCTV cameras at the strong rooms in Nilgiris, Erode and Villupuram districts. He stated that the ECI shall take steps to instil confidence in the voters by holding a probe into the technical glitches suffered by the surveillance systems at the three constituencies and release a white paper on the findings.