DMK petitions EC seeking early declaration of postal ballots

In his representation made to the Chief Election Commissioner of India and Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Tamil Nadu on Wednesday, DMK organising secretary and Rajya Sabha MP RS Bharathi referred to his party’s earlier representations seeking to declare postal ballot results before counting the penultimate round of EVM machines and said, “Give a clear direction to all the returning officers to follow a uniform procedure throughout the state in the process of counting of postal ballots.”

He also asked the CEC to direct all returning officers to provide one table for every 500 ballots and to declare the results of postal ballots as soon as they are over and entered in form 20 without any delay and without waiting for the completion of the counting of EVMs.

Reiterating that increasing the number of tables would reduce time of exposure to infection, Bharathi accused ROs of noat complying with the EC direction of having a table for every 500 postal votes and said, “In two of the constituencies in Chennai, the postal ballots polled are more than 2,000. If all these postal ballots are to be counted, then it will take more time and it may go beyond the time consumed for counting the EVMs.”

Remarking that their apprehensions regarding the counting process was strengthened by ROs informing that they would declare results of postal ballots along with that of EVMs, Bharathi said that it seems ROs are adopting various procedures regarding counting of postal ballots, which is not good.