The number of polling booths in Greater Chennai limit will be increased by nearly 50 per cent as per the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) order the State government to prevent overcrowding owing to COVID-19 situation. A Chennai Corporation official has said the ECI has instructed to reduce the number of voters per booth to 1,000 from present 1,200. “As per the new rules, the city will have 6,009 polling booths for the upcoming Assembly elections. Presently, there are only 3,754 polling booths,” the official said.
The official added that the number of polling booths has been worked out based on the number of voters in the 16 Assembly constituencies in the Chennai district. As more than 1.25 lakh people have applied for including their names in the electoral list, the number of voters may increase in the city. “More booths will be created based on the number of new voters included in the electoral roll. The move of increasing the polling stations is to prevent overcrowding at the polling booths,” he said.
The recent draft electoral roll released, the city has more than 39.40 lakh voters. On the same side, the civic body has already commenced the preparations for the Assembly elections as it had brought 4,320 ballot units and 5,820 control units from Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. In total, the civic body is testing 10,214 ballot units and 7,810 control units. For the first time, it is informed that the representatives of the political parties can access the approved name inclusion applications before the final electoral list is released as the civic body assured them so.
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