In view of COVID-19 pandemic and the guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India (ECI), it had been proposed to have two counting centres for the district, said an election official here on Wednesday.
Speaking to The Hindu , the official said that there are seven Assembly Constituencies - Palani, Oddanchatram, Athur, Nilakottai, Vedasandur, Dindigul and Natham respectively. The total voters accounted for 18.73 lakh and there are 2,673 polling stations.
In 2016, all the seven Assembly Constituency votes were counted at the Anna University Engineering College campus.
However, due to the pandemic, it had been proposed to have a counting centre at GTN Arts College as well, the official said and added that it was to ensure that there was no over-crowing.
Thus, votes of five Assembly Constituencies - Palani, Oddanchatram, Athur, Nilakottai and Vedasandur would be counted at Anna University Engineering College campus and the remaining - Dindigul and Natham - would be counted at the GTN Arts College. It may be noted that ECI had appointed a General Observer for the Natham and Dindigul Assembly Constituencies and hence, the counting centre for these two constituencies would be ideal, the official added.
Due to the pandemic, the officials have already split the polling stations with a cap of 1,050 voters. Likewise, the polling hour too has been extended by an hour to ensure that there was no overcrowding in any stations at any given point of time, the official added.