Vellore to decide its LS member today

Polling will take place in 1,553 polling booths set up in 690 locations. A total of 68 polling booths have been declared vulnerable with officials taking all effort to ensure free, fair and peaceful polls.

The polls will see the use of 3,732 EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines), 1,886 control units and 1,998 VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) machines. A total of 3,200 staff including teachers have been put on poll duty.  

A total of 28 candidates in the fray, including 25 independents and three from registered parties. The main contest will be between the NDA’s AC Shanmugam and DMK’s DM Kathir Anand, the son of party Treasurer and Katpadi MLA Duraimurugan. Naam Tamilar Katchi’s Deepalakshmi is the dark horse in the fray.

Shanmugam is contesting this seat for the third time. An experienced politician, he was the Arni MLA in 1980 and the Vellore MP in 1984. He lost to the AIADMK candidate B Senguttuvan in 2014. He is now contesting again for the third time. For Kathir Anand and Deepalakshmi, this if their first political outing.

Elections for the Vellore constituency scheduled for April 18, was cancelled following seizure of cash from the premises of a person close to the DMK candidate.