Date:13/06/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/06/13/stories/2007061306070100.htm

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Paramilitary forces for byelection

Special Correspondent

Voters are requested to bring to notice cases of mismatch of images

CHENNAI: Six companies of Central paramilitary forces will be deployed in the Madurai West Assembly constituency for the June 26 byelection. Talking to newsmen here on Tuesday, Chief Electoral Officer Naresh Gupta said the Election Commission had already directed the State Government to shift out of Madurai police personnel above the ranks of grade I and II constables, who are native of the district or who had completed three years of service in the last four years. The State Government submitted a list of substitute police officers, which had been sent to the Election Commission for approval.

Reacting to a demand for transfer of the Madurai Corporation Commissioner, the CEO said the Revenue Divisional Officer was the Electoral Registration Officer for the byelection and the Commissioner was not connected with the byelection work. As per the code of conduct, local officials were barred from meeting the Chief Minister and Union and State Ministers during election campaign.

Referring to complaints that the image of a particular elector had been repeated for several electors in the Alandur Assembly constituency in Kancheepuram district, Mr. Naresh Gupta said a programmer was deputed to set right the defect. It was found that the image file name in the electors' photo identity cards control table had got repeated for different electors resulting in the image appearing several times. Following this, databases of all constituencies in the district were checked.

A similar problem was found in the photo roll relating to the Tambaram constituency.

Corrections were being done and the roll would be re-published after obtaining the approval of the Election Commission. This might take about 10 days.

As the photo roll was being prepared for the first time and images were captured during different points of time, starting from 1997 onwards, there was a possibility of mismatch of images. People were, therefore, requested to bring to notice such cases of mismatch by filing Form 8 with Form 001B.

In Chennai, as the overall coverage of electors was only 77.25 per cent, there would be gaps in the photo roll to that extent.

The process of capturing images of all residual electors would continue till nearly cent per cent coverage was achieved.

Officials would verify to set right the cases of mismatch of images, besides capturing the images of residual electors, the CEO said.