SEC: 1,794 plaints received and solved

State Election Commissioner R Palanisamy on Saturday said that the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission (TNSEC) received as many as 1,794 petitions and all of them were resolved.

“From December 1, last year, till Saturday, 712 petitions and 1,082 phone calls were received by the TNSEC. The Election Commission has taken immediate action on all the petitions and all of them were solved,” said Palaniswamy, in a statement.

The elections to the rural local bodies were conducted in two phases, on December 27 and 30 in 27 districts. The elections were conducted for 515 district panchayat ward posts, 5,090 panchayat union ward posts in 314 panchayat unions, 9,624 panchayat presidents and 76,746 village panchayat ward members.

However, even before the election was conducted, 18,570 posts were filled unopposed, including 18,137 panchayat wards, 410 panchayat presidents and 23 panchayat union ward members.

In the first phase of the voting, 77.10 percentage polling was recorded in 24,680 polling booths, while in the second phase of voting, 77.73 percentage of polling was recorded in 25,008 polling booths. In total, the polling took place in 49,688 booths.

Meanwhile, there were incidents of booth-rigging and names of candidates not being printed on the ballot papers due to which the elections were cancelled in 30 polling booths in the first phase and repolling was conducted on December 30. 72.7 percentage polling was recorded in the repolling.

Similarly, in the second phase of the election, there were problems in nine polling booths for which repolling was conducted on January 1, in which the polling percentage was 59.42. In total, the two phases of the polling and repolling recorded 77.46 percentage of votes.

Due to deaths, the polling was cancelled in three panchayat wards in Tiruchy, Thiruvarur and Thiruvannamalai districts. As names of the voters in the additional voting list released on December 23 were removed, counting of votes was stopped for 25 different posts and after investigation the votes would be counted, and results would be published for the posts.

Asserting that the two-phase polls for rural local bodies was held in a free, fair and transparent manner, Tamil Nadu State Election Commissioner R Palaniswamy on Saturday said the elections for urban local bodies would be held at the earliest. Talking to reporters here, he said rural local body polls took place without any malpractices. Counting has been stopped in 25 places for certain reasons. The polls, held after a gap of eight years, was the first local body elections since the demise of the two top Dravidian stalwarts AIADMK’s J Jayalalithaa and ‘s M Karunanidhi. Out of the total 515 district panchayat ward member posts, the DMK combine won 237 (DMK-215, Congress-13, CPI-7, and CPI (M)-2, while the AIADMK front emerged successful in 210 seats (AIADMK 187, PMK-16, BJP-5 and DMDK-2).