Strong rooms sealed in front of candidates, agents

Elaborate security arrangements have been made at all the nine centres in the district, where the counting would take place on Feb 22 (Tuesday).

After the polling ended on a peaceful note in the district on Saturday at 6 p.m., the EVMs were moved from the polling stations to the respective counting centres designated by the officials late on Saturday night amidst tight security. The Thoothukudi Corporation ward EVMs were deposited in the VOC Government Engineering College, where the counting would begin on Tuesday. With regard to the Municipalities and Town Panchayats, the officials moved the ballot machines to the respective counting centres from the polling stations.

District Election Officer and Collector K Senthil Raj, Corporation Commissioner T. Charushree, Election Observer Atul Anand and other officials supervised the safe deposit of the EVMs and other poll related materials.

Superintendent of Police S Jeyakumar said that three-tier security was in place at all the locations where the EVMs were deposited. Apart from the armed police from the Tamil Nadu Special Police, the district police were deployed inside and outside the premises. The CCTV cameras were functioning round the clock.

The security personnel included one DSP, 450 other officers, including Inspectors, SIs and policemen and women. On the counting day, 1500 personnel would be deployed, he added.

The district, which has one Corporation, three Municipalities and 17 Town Panchayats, has 396 ward posts vacant. The counting, which was likely to begin from 8 a.m. onwards on Tuesday, was expected to declare the results from noon onwards.

While the polling largely ended on a peaceful note, minor skirmishes in some locations were controlled immediately without allowing them to flare up, police added.