Tamilnadu urban civic polls soon: SEC


R Palaniswamy

Chennai: State Election Commissioner R Palaniswamy today said elections for urban local bodies like city Corporations and Municipalities will be held at the earliest.

Speaking to mediapersons here, he said the recently held rural local body elections took place without any malpractices.

”Clarifications were given to the complaints made by the DMK. A total of 77.46 per cent votes were polled in both the phases. If any mistake is found during the counting process, action will be taken based on video recordings. There are no confusions in the electoral rolls,” he said.

He further said counting has been stopped in 25 places. ”Those who are elected will assume office at 10 am on 6 January,” he added.

In a closely fought contest in polls to rural civic bodies in 27 districts, the the ruling AIADMK and the main opposition DMK emerged winners in most of the seats, with the latter getting a slight edge over the former.

The polls, held after a gap of eight years, is the first local body elections since the demise of the towering Dravidian leaders J Jayalalithaa and M Karunanidhi.

As counting of votes polled in the elections held from 27 and 30 December continued for the second consecutive day on Friday, the DMK front won 2,215 ward member posts in Panchayat unions out of the total 5,090 posts with the AIADMK bagging 2,069.

Others, including smaller parties, won 517 seats. In the opposition front, the DMK itself won 1,997, Congress 126, CPI 61 and CPI(M) 31 ward member posts while the AIADMK bagged 1,668 posts, allies PMK 224, DMDK 93 and BJP 84, according to official results made available at 9 pm on Friday.

In percentage terms, DMK accounted for 43.51 per cent of the panchayat union seats and the AIADMK marginally behind at 40.64 per cent. Out of the total 515 district panchayat ward member posts, the DMK combine won 237 (DMK 215, Congress 13, CPI 7,and CPI(M) 2) while the AIADMK front emerged successful in 210 seats (AIADMK 187, PMK 16, BJP 5 and DMDK 2).