MADURAI
With only a day to go for the parliamentary elections, the District Election Office intensified the last leg of preparatory activities for the polling on Thursday.
The vehicles that will carry polling materials to more than 2,700 polling stations in the district were fitted with GPS devices on Tuesday as per the guidelines of the Election Commission of India (ECI). Collector S. Natarajan inspected these vehicles at the Armed Reserve grounds.
Officials said that the movement of vehicles to all the polling stations through the zonal parties will commence on Wednesday late in the morning.
The strongrooms where the Electronic Voting Machines and the Voter-verified Paper Audit Trail will be kept after the polling were also inspected by senior officials.
The distribution of voter slips by booth level officials continued on Tuesday as well. While officials claimed that all households were issued voter slips, there were complaints from many areas, particularly within the city limits, that they had not received the voter slips.
Many voters complained that the 1950 helpline number, through which they can receive details regarding their electoral rolls by providing the Elector's Photo Identity Card number was inaccessible on Tuesday.
The last round of training for the roughly 13,500 polling personnel in the district is scheduled for Wednesday. Soon after the training, the polling personnel will be issued orders with the information on the polling station to which they are deployed. On receiving the orders, the personnel are expected to directly report at the respective stations on Wednesday evening for duty.
A key concern raised by polling officials is the delay in providing postal ballots or Election Duty Certificate (EDC) for them to cast votes. Mr. Natarajan said that the issue had been addressed now.
