Don’t allow booth agents to collect forms, AIADMK urges DEO

The AIADMK on Thursday urged the Election Commission to cancel the permission given to booth-level agents (BLA) of recognised political parties to collect the filled up enumeration forms from the voters during Special Intensive Revision of electoral roll, which is under way.

In a memorandum to Collector V. Saravanan, who is the District Election Officer, AIADMK district secretaries P. Kumar (Tiruchi South), M. Paranjothi (Tiruchi North), and Srinivasan (Tiruchi city), said that the booth-level officers (BLOs) had started distributing forms door to door among voters. It was announced that the BLAs of 12 recognised political parties can each collect 50 filled forms from voters and hand them over to the respective election authorities. Under this arrangement, there was scope for BLAs to influence the voters or commit discrepancies with regard to applicants known to be sympathisers of rival parties. Only the BLOs should collect the filled up forms from voters, they demanded.