Stick to vehicle limit or will lose campaign permission: EC

Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni said that a warning would be issued to the candidates who use more than the permitted number of vehicles. If the warned nominee violated the same norm again, his permission for election campaign would be cancelled, he told reporters hereon the sidelines of a meeting with the candidates.

He said 15 companies of paramilitary forces would reach the city on December 11 and take their positions in the constituency the next day. Besides manning sensitive places, they would also carry out patrolling in the constituency from December 12.

On the same day, the process of issuing booth slips to the voters would commence, the CEO said and added election officials would supervise door to door delivery of booth slips. Political parties had been barred from distributing booth slips to the voters and those who violated this stipulation would be arrested, Rajesh Lakhoni warned.

The ruling AIADMK and BJP, besides the Naam Tamilar Katchi party continued the election campaign on Friday.

Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, along with the ministers, held consultation meetings with the party workers and went through several streets to cavass votes for the party’s presidium chairman E Madhusudhanan.

BJP state president Tamilisai Soundarrajan addressed roadside meetings at VOC Nagar and Vinoba Nagar to seek votes for party nominee Karu Nagarajan.

The DMK candidate Marudhu Ganesh is carrying out a door to door campaign, but the leaders of the opposition including DMK working president MK Stalin, would launch the election campaign only on December 11 at a joint public meeting.

The bypoll scheduled for April 12 was cancelled due to allegations of money distribution by the candidates to the voters. This time, the commission had come out with numerous restrictions to prevent a repeat of what happened last time.

Already, the EC had banned the political parties from door to door campaign during the nights and CCTV cameras had been installed in about 300 places in the constituency.