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Local body elections will be held in Tamil Nadu in two phases later this month to elect 1.06 lakh ward members in rural local bodies and 12,524 Panchayat presidents. Elections for urban local bodies will be announced later, Tamil Nadu State Election Commission Commissioner R Palaniswamy, said.
The first phase will be held on December 27 and the second on December 30.Nominations for the election will commence on December 6 and the last date for submission will be December 13. Scrutiny of the nominations will be held on December 16 and the last date of withdrawal the nomination will be December 18. Counting of votes will be held on January 2, says the announcement by the Commission, said an announcement by the State Election Commission.
A total of 3.31 lakh voters, including 1.67 lakh women, and 2,277 transpersons, will cast their votes in the rural local elections. Nearly 5.18 lakh officials will be deployed in the entire exercise, Palaniswamy said.
As per the Constitutional mandate the ordinary elections were successfully conducted by the Commission in October, 2011. A mammoth 1,32 lakh posts had to be filled up by the direct elections and 14,020 posts by indirect elections apart from committee elections. In the direct elections 19,647 candidates were elected unopposed and 4.11 lakh candidates were in the fray for the remaining 1.12 lakh posts.
In these elections, over 2.45 lakhs ballot boxes were used in 60,514 polling stations in rural local bodies. And 78,903 EVMs were used in 25,877 polling stations in urban local bodies. Around 6.30 lakhs polling personnel were deployed.
The rural areas recorded high percentage of polling (81.81 per cent) whereas in the urban areas the poll percentage recorded is marginally less (72.52 per cent). The overall poll percentage in the Local body election, 2011 is 78.80 which is higher than all the previous ordinary local body elections, according to information available in the Commission’s website.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear on December 5 an application filed by the DMK for a direction to the authorities to carry out delimitation, reservation and rotational process before issuance of election notification for local body polls. This is taking in consideration that five new districts carved out in the State recently.
The DMK in its application before the Apex stated that delimitation, reservation and rotation process and completion of formal legal requirements were necessary to ensure free and fair elections.
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