A challenging poll, says Praveen Kumar

Soon after the announcement of poll schedule by the Election Commission of India, Tamil Nadu chief electoral officer Praveen Kumar on Tuesday said that the forth coming assembly elections in Tamil Nadu will be quite a challenging one in terms of organising logistics, managing poll staff, tracking expenditure of candidates and security deployment. The ECI on Tuesday evening announced that assembly polls to the state will be held on April 13.


"In the recent past, the EC had received many complaints about election malpractices. In view of this, the EC took effective measures during last year's Bihar elections to curb money flow. The same guidelines will also be followed in Tamil Nadu assembly polls," Praveen Kumar told TOI.

Asserting that the election department would be very strict in enforcing the model code of conduct and implementing expenditure guidelines during elections, he said the video surveillance team would be put in place in all constituencies to monitor expenditure and model code of conduct.

According to him, candidates should open a new account as per the EC guidelines and all the election expenses should be transacted only through that account.

"About 2.5 election staff will be appointed and more than one lakh security personnel will be deployed during election time," Praveen Kumar said.

On his predecessors shrugging helplessness about checking irregularities during previous elections citing lack of sufficient poll staff, he sa [...]