The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : We moved poll panel at the first opportunity: AIADMK

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 09, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

We moved poll panel at the first opportunity: AIADMK

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, FEB. 8. The All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam has taken exception to the claim by the Union Minister, Priyaranjan Das Munshi, that the Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, delayed making a complaint about omissions in electoral rolls.

In a statement, the AIADMK election wing secretary and Public Works Minister, O. Paneerselvam, said the party moved the Election Commission "at the first opportunity when the glaring omissions in the electoral rolls came out."

Even as polling was in progress, the Chief Minister detected the "grave omissions and the mass deletions of names" in the electoral rolls at the booth itself. "The media, both print and electronic, highlighted this specific incident when our leader brought out the glaring omissions," he said.

Also, the AIADMK presidium chairman and Finance Minister, C. Ponnaiyan, brought to the EC's notice that his name had been deleted from the rolls.

The AIADMK also brought to its notice "serious irregularities" during the election. Mr. Paneerselvam said he also sent a letter on June 14, 2004 to the EC setting out the "multifarious irregularities including malpractices, collusive deletion of genuine voters, inclusion of bogus voters of Opposition parties, refusal to enrol genuine voters and the role played by poll officers acting in concert with the Opposition parties in effecting these irregularities and malpractices."

On August 31 Ms. Jayalalithaa wrote a demi-official letter to the Chief Election Commissioner drawing his attention to the fact that at the all-party meeting on July 24 proof of the "glaring and totally unacceptable irregularities had been produced and in view of the seriousness of the problem, a summary revision of rolls on the usual basis would not be in order and only an intensive revision can rectify the large-scale irregularities."

`Our stand upheld'

Thanks to the efforts of the Chief Minister, the EC "had no option but to order a wide-ranging enquiry into all the irregularities and errors," Mr. Paneerselvam said.

"The very fact that the Election Commission of India has asked the Chief Electoral Officer, Tamil Nadu, to take action against the Electoral Registration Officers of all 234 Assembly segments in Tamil Nadu on grounds of these glaring omissions and irregularities indicates that our stand has been fully upheld."

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