As many as 184 candidates filed their nominations on the last date on Friday. The total number of candidates who have filed their nominations to contest the upcoming Assembly elections is 424 in Puducherry.
Addressing the reporters, Chief Electoral Officer V.Candavelou on Friday said that the scrutiny of the nomination papers will start on Saturday. The Election Commission has appointed seven general observers for Puducherry. This includes four observers for Puducherry region and one each for Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam.
“Apart from this, there are seven expenditure observers deployed along with three additional expenditure observers. Of this, six will be deployed in Puducherry region and two for Karaikal, one each in Yanam and Mahe,” he said.
The CEO underlined that for the first time in Puducherry, police observers have been appointed to look into the security arrangements.
He added that the special expenditure observers have already visited and reviewed the working of expenditure monitoring teams.
Mr.Candavelou said that the flying squads have been increased from 45 to 90. There will be three flying squads for each Assembly constituency. The surveillance team has recovered Rs. 18.43 lakh and 5,600 liquor bottles. In addition to this, saris, towels and home appliances have also be seized.
Voter list
The electoral roll revision which started in September came to an end on Friday. In the final list, the total number of electorates in Puducherry is 9,41,935, of which women form 52.5 per cent of the voters with a total of 4,46,967 and the number of male voters is 4,94,224. There are at least 79 transgenders, 53 service voters and 128 NRI voters.
“Compared to the previous voters’ list which was released in January, there has been an increase of 14,279 voters. We have published the second supplement with additions and deletions. This list will be given to the political parties and contesting candidates,” he said.
While Yanam, Oulgaret and Villianur have large number of electors, Ourleanpet, Raj Bhavan and Uppalam have the least.
SVEEP activities
The CEO said that Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) will send out post cards to individual voters especially in constituencies where the polling turnout was low in the previous election. “The SVEEP will be targeting the first time and physically challenged voters. The Election Commission has tied up with BSNL to send bulk SMS a day before the elections to all the voters. A website to inform details of the candidates and track polling percentage on the polling date is also ready,” he added.
