A day after the Election Commission of India announced the election schedule for Tamil Nadu and three other States, the district administration on Saturday began the process of setting up a control room at the Collectorate.
District Collector K. Rajamani had asked a District Revenue Officer-level official to head the control room and that was most likely to be headed by the DRO in-charge of land acquisition for the Coimbatore airport expansion project.
The administration was in the process of setting up phone lines with toll-free number. Once complaints start pouring in, the control room staff, who would manage the room 24x7 in turns, would forward the complaints to the DRO-cadre officers.
Mr. Rajamani said the administration had calculated that it would need additional 1,300-odd polling booths in the ensuing election to ensure it could enforce COVID-19 safety protocol. Of the 1,300-odd booths, 900-odd booths will be in the same polling station. The rest would be at a premises close by, he said.
While identifying voters who would be exercising their franchise in the new booths, the administration had taken care to see to it that people of a street or layout or an area were not divided to poll in two different booths, he added.
The increase in number of booths would mean the administration would require more staff. It had identified that it would require an additional 5,516 polling personnel, which it would draw from Central and State government departments and that include public sector undertakings.
Surveillance teams
The administration has formed three static surveillance team, three flying surveillance team and two video surveillance team for each Assembly constituency. A total of 230 electronic voting machines have been sent to the returning officers of the 10 Assembly constituencies for training the staff, the sources said.