The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Poll Commission officers coming

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 06, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Poll Commission officers coming

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, JULY 5 . The Election Commission (EC) will send two officers to the State this month in connection with the ongoing inquiry into complaints of large-scale deletion of names from electoral rolls.

Talking to newsmen here today, the EC's inquiry officer, P.J.Thomas, said A.N. Jha, Deputy Commissioner in-charge of Tamil Nadu, and Rajesh Agarwal, Director, Information system of the Commission, would meet representatives of political parties by the third or fourth week of July. Their schedule was not yet finalised. Mr. Thomas said 40,000 complaints, including 5,892 petitions from the public handed over by N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, on omission of names were received from June 7 to 21.

Most of these complaints were submitted by individuals and some were sent by residents' associations. The EC started receiving the District Collectors's remarks on the complaints and they were being compiled. To a query, Mr. Thomas said the dumping of voter identity cards along with garbage on the Vaigai riverbed in Madurai had not been brought to his notice.

The Chief Electoral Officer, Mrutyunjay Sarangi, said a report was sought from the Madurai Collector, who was conducting an enquiry. The police were also going ahead with their investigation.

Our Ramanathapuram

Staff Reporter reports:

The Ramanathapuram Collector, K. Chellamuthu, has ordered an enquiry by an revenue divisional officer (RDO) into the dumping of hundreds of photo identity cards on the Vaigai riverbed. The RDO would hold enquiries with all parties including officials of the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu, which was entrusted with producing the cards.

The Collector, however, denied that the majority of the cards found on Sunday belonged to Ramanathapuram district. The police informed him that only three cards belonged to voters in Kadaladi and Ramanathapuram.

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