The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Poll panel to ensure adherence to norms

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 30, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Poll panel to ensure adherence to norms

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: The State Election Department will hold a series of meetings with the Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), starting from Thursday, to ensure that the EROs adhere to the Election Commission's recent stipulations, while processing the applications for claims and objections.

Top officials of the Election department will brief the EROs in charge of the northern districts on Thursday here and those in charge of western districts on Friday in Coimbatore. This will be followed by another meeting in Tiruchi on July 5 for the EROs looking after the eastern and central districts. The last meeting will be at Tirunelveli for the southern districts, Naresh Gupta, Chief Electoral Officer, told The Hindu on Wednesday.

During the meetings, the chief, deputy and joint electoral officers will check whether the disposal of claims and objections have been made correctly.

The exercise assumes significance against the backdrop of the recent controversy of the "last-minute heavy rush" in submission of the applications in many assembly constituencies. The period for the submission of the applications expired on May 30 in 165 constituencies covered by the process of summary revision of voters' rolls. In 30 tsunami-hit assembly constituencies (where a separate schedule is followed), the time given for the claims and objections was up to June 15. Intensive revision of electoral rolls is being carried out in 39 constituencies and according to the current schedule, the draft rolls will have to be published on July 11. Only after this, the stage will be set in for giving applications for inclusion of names or objections against deletion of names.

For 234 constituencies, there are 84 EROs, meaning that each ERO is looking after three on an average. The Election department has decided to hold the meetings for all of them together as many EROs, handling constituencies covered by the summary revision, are also assigned the areas wherein the intensive revision is on.

An official release issued on Wednesday evening stated that "the meetings will be a prelude to the check by the officers of the Election Commission who are expected to visit the State around July 11 and cover the assembly constituencies where the receipt of applications is heavy and there is apprehension that the Electoral Registration Officers might not dispose of the applications objectively."

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