As many as 25.94 lakh voters in Madurai district are expected to exercise their franchise and thereby decide the fate of three parliamentary constituencies through the polling for parliamentary elections on Thursday.
Collector and District Election Officer S. Natarajan, who oversaw the transportation of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), Voter-verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) and other polling materials to all polling stations, said that all arrangements were in place.
With the car festival of Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple and ‘Ethir Sevai’ of Lord Kallalagar Temple coinciding with the polling on Thursday, he reiterated that special arrangements had been made to ensure that the polling process was unaffected.
Fifty nine polling stations in 18 locations in places where car festival happens and 53 polling stations in 15 places on the route taken by Kallalagar’s procession have been marked as vulnerable polling stations.
“Apart from deployment of central forces and installation of web cameras in these stations, medical teams will also be present near them,” he said.
These 112 polling stations were among the 792 polling stations identified as vulnerable across the district. Of these, 444 are in Madurai parliamentary constituency while the rest are in Virudhunagar and Theni parliamentary constituencies, which encompass part of Madurai district.
In Madurai parliamentary constituency alone there are 15,38,133 voters, who are expected to cast their votes in 1,549 polling stations.
In view of Chithirai festival, the Election Commission of India has extended the polling time for Madurai constituency by two hours. While voters from the district coming under Theni and Virudhunagar constituencies can vote from 7 a.m. till 6 p.m., those in Madurai parliamentary constituency can exercise their franchise till 8 p.m.
Roughly 13,500 polling personnel, who attended their final round of training on Wednesday, were informed of their polling station with the orders issued to them. They have started reporting for poll duty from Wednesday afternoon.
