As the Supreme Court has set September 15 as the deadline for conducting local body elections in nine districts, including Tirunelveli and Tenkasi, the first-level checking of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) and the control units in the presence of political parties’ representatives is under way here since Thursday.
Local body polls were not conducted in nine districts, as delimitation exercise could not be completed properly after new districts were carved out from existing ones two years ago, the State Government has planned to conduct the rural civic polls before September 15, as mandated by the Supreme Court.
Moreover, steps were being taken to conduct the election for the urban civic bodies across Tamil Nadu before December this year.
Hence, the first-level checking of EVMs and the control units started here on Thursday. In the process, 3,200 EVMs and 1,600 control units, all brought here from Karnataka, were being subjected to the first-level checking at Sankar Nagar Town Panchayat office on the city outskirts under tight security arrangements.
In the presence of officials and representatives of the political parties, the serial numbers and the year of manufacturing of the EVMs and the control units were being recorded and uploaded in the State Election Commission’s website.
“This work will be completed within a week,” said Kutralingam, Assistant Director of Town Panchayats.
If the civic polls were notified by the State Election Commission as stipulated by the Supreme Court, a team of technicians from the Bharat Electronics Limited will be roped in to calibrate the EVMs and the control units to get the machines prepared for the polls.
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