Voters roll out a list of complaints

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, NOV. 26. As the State electoral authorities wound up the second round of revision of electoral rolls in the city today, many centres were plunged in confusion and disarray.

The scene at a booth in Thiruvanmiyur where a classroom of the Sri Sankara Matriculation Higher Secondary School was used for distribution and receipt of relevant forms was no exception.

Residents waited in queues for long hours before they could get the forms and the wait continued for those who struggled to submit the forms.

``There is no organised procedure,'' said an exasperated resident of Valmiki Nagar in Thiruvanmiyur. ``There were only two staff members engaged in the process and even among the two staffers, the residents were shunted across from one table to another in an attempt to locate their names in the electoral roll.'' he pointed out.

Moreover, the voters who sought forms in English were given a single original copy of the form and asked to make photo copies. The officials apparently told them that there was only one form in English.

Another woman said she had been waiting for about three hours in the booth to submit her form. Her husband and she were taking turns and waiting in the booth, she added.

While the booth began functioning early today, there was just one designated staff member engaged in the process and later two others joined them. However, the haphazard distribution became more compounded as the officials `went off duty every once in a while', the voters complained.

The residents pointed out that the officials themselves were not sure about the procedure for acceptance of forms. People were not only asked to produce their identification certificates of proof of age and address but also asked to submit photocopies of the proof along with the forms. Most voters said these requirements were not specified in earlier announcements and neither were they mentioned anywhere in the form.

Some at a booth in the Corporation Higher Secondary School on Bharathi Dasan Road in Thiruvanmiyur were asked to go to another booth in Kuppam as their area was not in the list provided to the officials in the booth. However, the officials themselves were not aware of the location of the `Kuppam' booth.

Voters who went to the Government Boys School in Chromepet complained that their forms were not accepted by the officials in the booth when they were collectively submitted.

A member of the Chromepet Residents Welfare Association complained that filling up the forms was a complex procedure. Filling up certain columns was extremely difficult as they were incomprehensible, he pointed out.

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