TIRUCHY: Minor incidents of violence marred otherwise peaceful polling in the Central districts of Tamil Nadu on Thursday. Further, voters were inconvenienced by malfunctioning Electronic Voting Machines in many booths. In a tragic incident, 60-year-old Mallika, of Kurungalur near Embal village in Aranthangi, fainted while getting her finger inked and died in the polling booth there.
While violence was anticipated at the Karur constituency where DMK and AIADMK cadres clashed just days ago, polling went off peacefully with AIADMK cadres ending the day by firing crackers and distributing sweets, claiming their candidate Lok Sabha deputy speaker M Thambidurai had won.Other high-profile candidates in the region include VCK chief Thol Thirumavalavan, IJK leader T R Parivendar, former Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president S Thirunavukkarasar, former Tiruchy mayor Sarubala Thondaiman and former union minister of state SS Palanimanickam.
In the morning as polling began, several complaints of EVM malfunctioning emerged. In Tiruchy Lok Sabha constituency alone 31 malfunctioning EVMs were replaced with alternative machines delaying polling in some booths. At a polling booth in Ariyalur, voters were made to wait for close to three hours — one woman fainted had to be taken to the hospital.
Polling in the caste sensitive Chidambaram constituency, where Thirumavalavan is contesting, was peaceful till afternoon when a clash between PMK and VCK cadres took place at Ponparappi in Ariyalur district. Eight persons were injured and 10 houses in a Dalit colony were damaged. A heavy posse of police was deployed at the village following the violence. Small scuffles were also seen in Vengalam and Veppur villages in Perambalur constituency which otherwise voted peacefully.
Meanwhile, 13 villages affected by land acquisition for a mining project boycotted the polls, affecting turnout. In Melur village, for instance, only 732 cast their votes out of 2167. The delta region, which has seen a series of farmer protests over Cauvery river rights, natural gas extraction projects and poor crop insurance disbursement, saw a good turnout although observers said that the absence of late AIADMK supremo J Jayalalithaa and late DMK chief M Karunanidhi may have dimmed voter enthusiasm.