Chennai, Feb 23 (PTI) Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar, accompanied by senior officials of the Election Commission of India, on Friday commenced his two-day review of Tamil Nadu’s preparedness for the Lok Sabha elections.
He is set to meet representatives of as many as nine political parties, including the Dravidian majors, discuss issues related to conducting the elections and also hold a review meeting with district collectors and superintendents of police later in the day.
The CEC will also be meeting the chief electoral officers of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala besides officials from the enforcement agencies, before wrapping up his meeting with the Tamil Nadu chief secretary and state DGP.
DMK Organisational Secretary R S Bharathi, who represented the ruling party at the meeting today, told reporters that the party expressed concern and doubts over the sequencing of the VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) in the EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) as this may lead to errors.
The DMK’s ally, CPI(M), too expressed concern that the VVPAT could be manipulated if it is connected to the control unit. The party’s State Secretary K Balakrishnan demanded the re-sequencing of the three units of electronic voting machines, namely the control unit, the ballot unit and the VVPAT.
He said it must be ensured that voters’ choice exercised in the ballot unit went into the control unit of the EVM where it is recorded, and only then routed to the VVPAT. In a release here, Balakrishnan said he favoured a single-day poll.
AIADMK leader and former state minister D Jayakumar told reporters here that his party sought the deployment of additional central forces for the smooth conduct of the election in Tamil Nadu. PTI JSP ROH JSP ANE
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