Chennai: Filing of nominations to contest in the civic polls in rural areas, barring the recently carved out nine districts, began in 27 districts of Tamilnadu today.
Candidates can file their nominations till 16 December. Those who are willing to contest in the polls have been asked to file their nomination forms to the election officials concerned from 10 am to 3 pm. Elections will be held to fill the 91,975 rural civic bodies posts in two phases on 27 and 30 December.
State Election Commissioner R Palaniswamy recently said ballot method will be followed in Grama Panchayat elections and four types of coloured ballot papers would be used in the polls. He also said elections would be held in a total of 49,688 polling booths and the voters would be given booth slips with their photo affixed on them.
In the first phase, elections will be held for 156 Panchayat Unions and in the second phase polls will be conducted for 158 Panchayat Unions. As many as 1.30 crore voters will cast their votes in the first phase and 1.28 crore people will exercise their democratic duty in the second phase.
The votes will be counted on 2 January and the results will be announced on the same day. Winners will assume office on 6 January. Following this, indirect elections to president posts will be held on 11 January from 7 am to 5 pm.
On 7 December, the SEC cancelled the already announced election dates. However, later in the day, it said that the polls will be held as planned.
It may be noted that on a petition filed by main Opposition DMK, the Supreme Court 6 December put on hold the elections for local bodies in nine new districts for complying with legal formalities such as delimitation and reservation in four months.
A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India S A Bobde accepted the suggestion of the Tamilnadu government that it was willing to put on hold the local body polls in the nine districts for complying with legal formalities such as a fresh delimitation exercise and for deciding the issue of reservation for women and SC/ST candidates.
The Bench also said that there would not be any legal impediment in holding the elections in the remaining districts of the State.