Poll to Vellore LS seat to be held on Aug 5

Polling for Vellore Lok Sabha seat was scheduled for April 18, along with the other constituencies of Tamil Nadu, but was cancelled on April 16 following the recovery of a huge amount of cash allegedly from an associate ofa DMK leader.

The notification for the August 5 election will be issued on July 11. The nomination process will begin the same day and the last date for filing papers is July 18.

The last date for withdrawing from the electoral battle is July 22 and the counting of votes will be taken upon August 9.

This was perhaps the first time that the election to a Lok Sabha constituency was cancelled over use of money power. The bypoll to the RK Nagar Assembly seat in Tamil Nadu was cancelled in April, 2017 following a similar seizure of huge amount of cash allegedly meant for bribing voters.

Once the results are announced, the Lok Sabha will have its full strength of 543 elected members.

Following the announcement, the model code of conduct was implemented immediately resulting in the Kudimaramathu meeting for farmers called for by Collector A Shanmugasundaram and the visit of the National Commission for SC/ST both scheduled for Thursday being cancelled.

Development activities came to a standstill in the Assembly segments of Vellore, Anaicut, KV Kuppam, Ambur, Vaniyambadi and Gudiyattam comprising the Vellore parliamentary seat.

Voters are also keen to see who the DMK candidate will be as the I-T department has already filed a case against Kathir Anand regarding undeclared money. While the NDA candidate is likely to be New Justice party founder AC Shanmugam, AMMK’s K Pandurangan has commented that he will contest only if asked to do so by TTV Dhinakaran due to the status of his physical and financial health.

The EC, in a release added that it has decided to use EVMs and VVPATs in the election in all the polling stations. Adequate numbers of EVMs and VVPATs  have been made available and all steps have been taken to ensure that  the polls were conducted smoothly.