A cool polling booth awaits voters at Tiruparankundram

There are 291 polling booths located in 97 polling stations in Tiruparankundram constituency and out of the total 291 polling booths 54 are sensitive. Apart from the sensitive booths district administration had also identified four model polling booths where additional facilities apart from the said facilities for a polling booths are present. The four model polling booths are identified as Vivekananda Kendra CBSE School at Harveypatti, Karadipatti Panchayat School, Government Higher Secondary School at Viraganoor and community hall at Panaiyur. Out of the four, the Vivekananda Kendra School has the new additional facility of an air-conditioned polling room. Election officials claimed that an air-conditioned room is first such initiative in the state and the voters would have never experienced such a polling booth. Apart from the air-conditioned room all the other facilities such as drinking water, adequate toilets, tube lights, fans, rams for differently-abled people and so on are also provided. The school also had been decorated with traditional festoons, colourful balloons and red carpet to welcome the voters and to give them a whole new experience in voting. 122 wheel chairs in polling stations All the 97 polling stations will have at least one wheel chair and in some of the booths there will be two wheel chairs to help the differently-abled people. Apart from that there will be assistants at all the polling booths to help the senior citizen cast their votes.

On the eve of the elections to Aravakurichi constituency, the Madras High Court on taking strong exception to repeated pleas challenging the acceptance of nomination papers of DMK and AIADMK candidate for the Assembly segment, dismissed a similar such plea after imposing a cost of Rs 3,000.

Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice R Mahadevan, on holding that this court has already answered this question in view of the Election Commission having accepted the nomination and allotted the symbol. Yet, this issue continues to be raised before this court by different parties including the one by the petitioner, a candidate, now on the anvil of the election one day before.

“We find, thus, such repeated endeavours a complete wastage of judicial time and consider it as a fit case where not only the petition should be dismissed but also costs should be imposed on the petitioner,” the bench said. AP Geetha of Desiya Makkal Sakthi Katchi and a candidate in the Aravakurichi Assembly constituency had contended that the Election Commission (EC) had earlier annulled the election to the Aravakurichi Assembly constituency due to large scale electoral malpractices resorted to by the DMK candidate KC Palanisamy and AIADMK candidate V Senthil Balaji. Hence, the EC ought to have rejected their nominations for Aravakurichi constituency, scheduled for polls on November 19.