Final day witnesses heavy rush

Up for grabs through direct elections are councillors posts in 12 corporations, 123 municipalities, 529 town panchayats, 385 panchayat unions and 12, 524 village panchayats. Panchayat presidents would be elected directly while mayors of corporations and municipalities and chairpersons of town panchayats would be elected indirectly. 

A total of 1,31,794 posts, including 1,18,974 in rural civic bodies and 12,820 posts in urban local bodies will face direct polls. Another 13,362 posts in rural areas and 1,328 posts in urban civic bodies would be filled through indirect elections.

The highest number of nominations (1,79,204) was for village panchayat wards followed by town panchayat wards garner-ing 11,671 nominations. While 5479 nominations were filed for municipal councillors posts, another 3912 were filed for the post of councillors in the 12 municipal corporations in the state. A total of 40, 872 nominations were filed for the post of village panchayat presidents. 

However, the actual number of contestants in the fray will be revealed only when scrutiny and withdrawal of nominations end on October 4 and October 6 respectively. Local bodies in Greater Chennai corporation would see voting on in the second phase on October 19. Vote counting would take place on October 21. Elected candidates will assume charge on October 24. Indirect elections for posts of Mayors, Deputy Mayors, Chairpersons and Vice-Chairperson of Municipali-ties and town panchayats are slated for November 2.

Tiruchy witnessed a heavy rush of candidates in all the election offices on Monday, the final day for filing nominations. Out of a total 683 candidates for 65 wards in the corporation, 342 candidates filed their papers on the last day while the Corpo-ration premises on Bharathidasan Road saw lot of activities like drum beating and cracker bursting by cadre and supporters. Interestingly, a DMDK candidate for ward 39, Alex came dressed like a king and amused everyone stating that he had come as a representative of the real kings, the voters. He went to the returning officer, P Subramani, and submitted his papers. 

Despite the nomination process commenced on September 26, the filing of nominations was very dull while only one independent candidate filed on the first day and later, the AIADMK candidates filed their papers. However, on the final day on Monday, the corporation office witnessed a heavy rush. 

Srirangam Zonal chairperson Latha who was denied seat this time, filed her papers as an independent candidate for ward no 1. Simialrly, those functionaries who were denied of seats in AIADMK filed their papers. 

Meanwhile, the DMK camp was going easy on the ensuing civic polls. 

While its arch rival AIADMK has fielded some heavy weights, including an ex-minister and a few former MLAs in the poll fray, the DMK has deliberately avoid-ed fielding veterans. Even the likes of K K Nagar Dhanasekaran, who made it big as a municipal councillor, T Nagar MLA can-didate N S Kanimzohi and even district functionary R D Sekar have been denied opportunity in the local body election. 

However, this has not discouraged the DMK from minimising its allocation to ally Congress, which would be contesting in 14 wards in Chennai Corporation, less than half the number (DMK gave around 17% seats to Congress in 2011) it had contested in the five years back in the same alliance, as was reported by DTNext earlier. However, the DMK has allotted a seat each to MMK and SDPI. 

DMK sources in the know of things told this paper that the party is wary of the manner in which the election would be conducted and hence it does not want to risk it too much. Indeed, there are a couple of old timers like Bose and Diwakar who have seen corporation aplenty, but the list (of candidates) is largely inexperi-enced, a DMK insider said, admitting that the same formula has been applied across the state. “If we manage to get good numbers in Chennai, we might choose one of them. If need be, we can even ask a senior MLA to resign and occupy the mayor’s office,” a senior DMK leader cas-ually said, suggesting that the probable mayoral candidate could be one of the district secretaries who had won the As-sembly election in the city.