Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

`Location of booths should not deter voting'

Special Correspondent

COIMBATORE: Fears of distance preventing people from voting and shift in sizeable chunks of voters to neighbouring wards were expressed by councillors on Friday at the Coimbatore Corporation Council's Special Meeting to discuss location of booths for the coming local body elections.

A draft list of 785 booths - specifically their location in each of the 72 wards - was put through a discussion to elicit the councillors' opinion on or objection to their location. The number of booths this time would be 29 more than in the 2001 civic body elections. It was announced in the Council that the final list would be released around August 15. But, discussions would be held with political parties in a couple of days to get their views or objections.

After Mayor In-charge K. Raghupathy took up the only agenda for the day, councillors from various parties pointed out that some of the booths and voters in their wards had been shifted to the neighbouring ones when the wards were shuffled for the Assembly constituencies in the May elections.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) councillor, R. Chandrasekaran, said this was a problem that affected his ward (No. 17) as a result of the changes made during the Assembly elections. While a section of the voters' Property Tax book had his ward number, their names were found in the list for the neighbouring one. So was the case with the polling booths, he complained.

The councillors pointed out that a ward split by two Assembly constituencies faced this problem. For instance, some wards in Ganapathy were split between Thondamuthur and Coimbatore East constituencies.

Mr. Chandrasekaran wanted the Corporation to go by the exact boundaries of each ward, as per its records, so that the present confusion could be eliminated.

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam councillor, M. Muthu, stressed the need for having booths close to each locality of the voters.

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