Political parties up in arms against new postal vote method

Tirupur: Political parties on Thursday questioned the new procedure of collecting postal votes in a strong room on a daily basis in the district and said the method offered a lot of room for manipulation.
CPM functionary R Gopalakrishnan said earlier postal votes were polled in sealed boxes and kept in separate strong room at the collectorate. “The boxes would then be sent to the respective parliamentary constituencies and the postal votes would be counted on the counting day along with the votes polled using EVMs.”

Pointing out that there were no sealed boxes in strong rooms for the postal votes in the present system, he said the postal votes would be now received from polling booths set up in respective government offices and police stations.

“Election officials would receive them and make an entry in register. We feel that it will be safe if the postal votes are polled in sealed boxes. If they are received separately and kept in strong room, there are chances for manipulation,” Gopalakrishnan said.

He also said it would be difficult for political parties to send their representatives daily to check the postal votes strong room. “When we questioned about it, we were told that it was new procedure, they have to stick to it.”

A senior election official said the government employees used to put their votes in sealed boxes earlier as there weren’t any polling booths in government offices. “Now, booths have been set up in their respective offices. The postal votes would be received from postman as well as from the booths at 3pm daily in the presence of representatives of political parties under the surveillance of CCTV cameras. So, there cannot be any manipulation.”