Work to feed name, symbols in EVMs for city seats begins

Regarding the arrangements for voting on April 18, a Chennai corporation official said as many as 9,695 EVMs would be used in three parliamentary constituencies in Chennai and Perambur Assembly constituency. In addition to the 9,695 EVMs, the civic body has readied 20 per cent more EVMs as standby to be used in case of any emergency. Overall, 11,627 EVMs will be at the disposal of officials for the April 18 exercise. Apart from this, 5,399 VVPAT devices and 4,969 control units are kept ready. Chennai district has 3,754 polling booths and 7 auxiliary polling booths.

“Of the total 20,102 polling officials appointed in Chennai district, 6,300 officials are eligible to vote in Chennai district. We have issued postal ballots to 4,313 polling officials and 1,764 have been given election duty certificate (EDC),” the official said. As per the supplementary electoral list released on March 26, there are 38,66,066 voters in the district, of which 19,59,862 voters are women. As many as 19,05,216 voters are men and 988 voters are transgenders.

“We have received 147 complaints regarding the violation of the model code of conduct of which FIRs were filed in 104 complaints. Also, 129 complaints of illegal banners were received and cases were filed on 107 complaints,” G Prakash, Chennai Corporation Commissioner and District Election Officer, said after inaugurating the process of fixing symbols on electronic voting machines (EVM), on Thursday.