CHENNAI: After eight years, people of Tamil Nadu are voting to elect local body representatives on Friday (today). Long queues were seen in many of the polling booths across the state. The elections are going on peacefully and no incidents of violence have been reported in the initial hours.
The first phase of the rural local body polls to be held in 27 districts, covers about 1.30 crores of the six crore voters. The second and final phase will be held on December 30. Totally, 2.31 lakh candidates are in the fray for 91,975 posts in rural local bodies in the 27 districts.
In the first phase, 45,336 rural local bodies will go to the polls for 37,830 Village Panchayat Ward member posts and 4,700 Village Panchayat Chairperson’s posts.
On behalf of AIADMK, Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Deputy CM O Panneerselvam sought performance vote from its rural vote bank. Highlighting that AIADMK has eliminated Kangaroo courts and land grabbing, the party promised that its candidates, if elected, will continue to discharge their duties with due diligence. The AIADMK-led alliance has BJP, PMK, DMDK and a few other parties.
On the other hand, attributing the three-year delay in the polls to the ‘fear’ of AIADMK to face the people of the State, DMK president MK Stalin said the party is determined to listen to grievances of people in rural areas. Many of their grievances like drinking water, street lights, general hygiene and good roads are issues that can be resolved easily. Of these, around 60 per cent would have been resolved if elections had been held on time, following due procedure, he said in a statement. DMK leads the opposition front with Congress, CPI, CPM, MDMK, VCK and a few other parties.
Some numbers of the first phase of the local body polls:
No of rural local bodies which to go to polls: 45,336
No of Village Panchayat Ward member posts: 37,830
No of Village Panchayat Chairperson posts: 4,700
No of Panchayat Union Ward member posts: 2,546
No of District Panchayat Ward member posts: 260
No of voters who would be exercising their franchise: 1.30 crore
No of polling booths: 24,680