1,510 booths vulnerable to poll offence in Chennai

According to data collected by the District Election Office for ‘vulnerability mapping', the Saidapet constituency has the highest number of critical booths.

A total of 1,510 polling booths across the 16 constituencies in the city have been found to be vulnerable to electoral offence.

According to data collected by the District Election Office for ‘vulnerability mapping', the Saidapet constituency has the highest number of critical booths.

The city has a total of 3,236 polling booths spread across 16 constituencies.

The District Election Office is planning to take measures for rigorous enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct to give confidence to voters belonging to the vulnerable sections in these polling booths.

These polling booths would be included in the ‘vulnerability mapping' that would be approved by the District Election Office in the presence of observers shortly. Various parameters are being included in the vulnerability mapping.

History of repoll in the previous election is one of the parameters, but repoll was not carried out in any of the polling booths in the previous elections.

A total of 654 booths in the city have recorded 10 percentage of votes more than the average votes polled, which is another parameter included for vulnerability mapping. If the percentage of votes polled in the previous election exceeds 75 per cent and the leading candidate in the booth gets 75 percent of such votes, it would be included in the mapping. A total of 179 booths have polled over 75 per cent of votes in the previous elections.

Installation of web camera, deployment of more paramilitary forces, flying squads and SMS-based poll management system are some of the options to be tried.