Electoral roll to be revised, published before polls: EC to court

The submission was made before a division bench comprising Justice M Sathyanarayanan and Justice AA Nakeeran before whom a plea came alleging failure to exclude voters who were shifted to Sholinganallur by the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB).

The petitioner, Sadhasivam, submitted that more than 4,188 persons from Thousand Lights Constituency and 2,871 persons from Chepauk and Triplicane were moved to Sholinganallur to remove slums along Cooum river. However, their names continue to figure in these constituencies. He sought a direction from the court to the EC to ensure that such voters are removed from the list.

The counsel appearing for the Commission submitted that such relocations happened at several other constituencies, including Villivakkam, Harbour and Anna Nagar, as well, and added that 12,032 voters have been removed from these constituencies.

The counsel also pointed out that the process of deletion and inclusion of names would be done and a draft electoral roll published before the Assembly election date was announced. Recording the submission, the bench disposed of the plea.

The division bench had earlier directed the ECI to act on a complaint by the DMK seeking to delete names of dead voters and rectify other discrepancies in the draft electoral roll before publishing the final list.

The DMK had alleged that the names of dead voters relating to the ruling party had not been deleted from the roll in a bid to manipulate the special summary revision process.