Distilleries and TASMAC outlets now under EC watch

Speaking to reporters after releasing Assembly Elections 2016 reference handbook brought out by Press Information Bureau (PIB) on Saturday, Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni said that all distilleries in the state had been now put on IP cameras to monitor their production, distribution and bottling online by dedicated teams for unaccounted IMFL production, if any.

“We can even monitor things up to the exit gate — which lorry is carrying what load and where it is going,” he said, adding that EC also monitored daily sale of products in Tasmac shops in the state and if the sale increased more than 30 per cent than the previous day, previous month’s average sale or previous year’s sale in a shop, EC would analyse the data and approach the shop to find out whether anybody had bought products in large quantities.

The CEO also said that EC had released the list of the first batch of 12 observers for expenditure and monitoring of cash in elections in Tamil Nadu. “The 12 IRS, IPS, IA and AS officers (observers) will come by April 19 or 20. The team will be split into four with three members in each for Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore and Villupuram districts,” he said. 

Responding to a question on monitoring of private and government vehicles, Lakhoni said that they had installed an IP camera at the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT), Koyambedu, to centrally monitor what is being loaded in government buses and if they had any suspicion, officials would send police to enquire about it. “We have also increased monitoring in railways. When the expenditure observers are deployed, the monitoring will get increased,” he added. 

The CEO also said that the commission received 6.84 lakh applications online for inclusion, deletion, change of address in electoral rolls, besides 10,000 to 12,000 calls daily to its call centre for various poll-related queries.