The district administration along with the police have started a ‘cleansing operation’ across the district by detaining anti-social elements under the Goondas Act to ensure trouble-free electioneering and peaceful polling of the urban civic polls to be held on February 19.
Speaking to reporters here on Saturday, Collector V. Vishnu said the district, having 55 wards in Tirunelveli Corporation, 69 wards in Vickramasingapuram, Ambasamudram and Kalakkad municipalities and 273 wards in 17 town panchayats, would have 933 polling booths for the urban civic polls to be held on February 19.
Of this, 490 booths would be created in Tirunelveli Corporation and the three municipalities would have 123 booths. Remaining 319 booths would be set-up in the 17 town panchayats.
“As the Old Pettai residents had submitted an appeal for creating one more booth in their area, we’ve accepted the plea and hence the Corporation wards will have 491 polling booths to take the total number of booths of the district to 933,” Mr. Vishnu said.
The Collector informed that 540 nominations had been filed for the 55 wards while the 69 wards of the three municipalities had attracted 329 candidature. For the 273 wards in the 17 town panchayats, 1,357 nominations had been filed and hence 2,226 nominations had been received for the urban civic polls, which were scrutinized on Saturday.
The 4,500-odd polling personnel to be used in the upcoming civic polls were being trained in phases. After the first phase of training held on January 31 for 3,375 persons in 14 centres, the second phase training would be conducted on February 10.
On the ‘cleansing operation’ being carried out by the police ahead of the polls, Mr. Vishnu said 25 persons including six anti-social elements from the Tirunelveli City and 19 history-sheeters from rural Tirunelveli had been detained under the Goondas Act to ensure peaceful electioneering and polling.
The Collector informed that Election Observer C.N. Maheshwaran could be contacted at 99529 28300 to register complaints pertaining to poll code violations. Moreover, officials in the rank of Joint Director or Assistant Director or Deputy Collector had been deployed in each zone of Tirunelveli Corporation, each municipality and each town panchayat as ‘Area Election Observers’.
He said round-the-clock election control room in the Collectorate had received 14 complaints so far on which immediate actions had been taken.
Corporation Commissioner B. Vishnu Chandran and Superintendent of Police P. Saravanan were present.
Published - February 05, 2022 06:40 pm IST
