Brisk polling in spite of complaints of last minute deletion of names of ‘genuine voters' from electoral rolls and ‘impersonation', was recorded in the booths in this district.
A sizable number of voters, hailing from Pillayarpalayam area in Kancheepuram town, were surprised to note that their names were marked as ‘deleted' in the official voter list issued to the presiding officer at a particular booth, though names of other members in their own family existed.
They were unable to comprehend what had happened to their votes as both the poll duty staff and senior officials who rushed to the booth on coming to know about the development stopped short of saying that they could do nothing about it as they had to rely on the list available with the presiding officer. Interestingly, a voter, armed with the booth slip issued by the Election Commission, was seen arguing with poll duty staff at a booth at Nemmeli in Tiruporur Constituency after he was denied to exercise his franchise as ‘someone had already' cast the vote. When he asked the authorities to verify who had cast the vote, the officials scanned the record book only to find that his serial number had not been entered in the book implying that the vote in his name had not been polled.
Finally, the voter was evicted from the booth. Meanwhile, at several booths it was noticed that either the polling booth agents or local revenue staff acted as polling staff as those, particularly women, posted for duty were seemed to have under-trained to manage the proceedings at the polling stations. While a polling agent was seen assisting poll officer-1 in reading out the name and serial number of the voters, a village administrative officer was seen operating the control unit of the EVM in one of the booths in Tiruporur Constituency.
At some of booths commencement of polling /continuance of polling, was disrupted for periods ranging from 30 to 60 minutes as the EVMs did not function in the morning. However, the election wing officials termed these incidents as small hiccups in the process and claimed that such problems were rectified immediately.
Later in the night, the District Election Officer and Collector, Ashish Chatterjee, told reporters that, as per the data collected at 5 p.m, around 60.50 polling was recorded in 11 Assembly Constituencies in Kancheepuram district.
