After a gap of eight years, the rural local body seats of Tamil Nadu have gone for polls on December 27 and Monday as well.
In the second phase of local body elections, 255 district panchayat wards, 2544 block panchayat union wards, 38,916 village panchayat wards, and 4,924 village panchayat president positions have participated in the elections in 27 districts of Tamil Nadu.
All the 46,639 seats were polled from morning 7 to evening 5 without any major glitches according to R Palaniswamy, State Election Commissioner, Tamil Nadu.
The SEC said 61.45 was the poll percentage for the civic polls on Monday by 3 pm.
SEC declared that 1.28 crore voters were eligible to cast their votes for these civic polls.
Elections were not conducted for 10 districts including Chennai as per the directions of the Supreme Court.
The elections were not announced following the recent bifurfucation of new districts in Kancheepuram, Vellore, Tirunelveli, Villupuram districts. Chengalpattu, Ranipet, Tirupattur, Kallakkurichi and Tenkasi are the newly bifurcated districts from Kancheepuram, Vellore, Villupuram and Tirunelveli districts.
In the first phase of elections, 260 district panchayat wards, 2456 Union Block Panchayat wards, 4700 village panchayat president positions and 37830 village panchayat wards had gone for polls on Friday.
Also, the Madras High Court had dismissed a petition asking to stall the counting process of these polls. Sattpanchayat, an anti-corruption outfit approached the MHC to stay the counting process until the civic polls for urban local bodies are conducted.
{{/usCountry}}Also, the Madras High Court had dismissed a petition asking to stall the counting process of these polls. Sattpanchayat, an anti-corruption outfit approached the MHC to stay the counting process until the civic polls for urban local bodies are conducted.
{{/usCountry}}A bench comprising of Judges Justice S Vaidyanathan and Justice AT Asha had dismissed the petition citing the Supreme Court’s direction that conducting urban local body elections are not an issue to holding these rural seats’ polls.
As DMK and few other parties approached the MHC to conduct the counting under the surveillance of video cameras, the SEC on Monday assured the counting will be caught on camera.
The results for phase one and phase two of the civic polls will be counted on January 2.