Madurai district administration scouts for alternative venues to set up counting centre during Assembly polls

With the Madras High Court directing the the Election Commission and Tamil Nadu Government to spare the Government Madurai Medical College buildings from being used as a vote counting centre for elections, Madurai district administration has started to scout for new buildings to set up counting centres for the 10 Assembly constituencies in the district during the enusing Assembly election.

Madurai District Election Officer and District Collector K.J. Praveen Kumar, along with Madurai City Commissioner of Police J. Loganathan, and District Superintendent of Police B.K. Arvind, inspected six college buildings across the district on Tuesday.

The student leaders of Madurai Medical College had objected to setting up counting centre on their college premises as the month-long security arrangment made during the 2024 Parliamentary election caused much inconvenience to students.

The officials inspected the Agricultural College and Research Institute at Othakadai, Government Arts and Science College at Kappalur, and on Anna University Regional campus at Keelakuyilkudi, Thiagarajar College of Engineering at Tirupparankundram, Madura College and Tamil Nadu Government Polytechnic College in Madurai West taluk.

The officials inspected the buildings and studied the feasibility of setting up separate counting centre for each of the Assembly constituencies, the strong rooms stocking electronic voting machines, strong rooms for keeping postal ballots, chambers for Election Observer and Returning Officers and the basic infrastructure on the premises.

The officials looked at the easy movement of heavy vehicles inside the college premises for taking EVMs after polling to the strong rooms of the respective counting centre.

Usilampatti sub-collector Utkarsh Kumar, Revenue Divisional Officers Karunakaran (Madurai), Sangeetha (Melur), and M. Sivajothi (Tirumangalam) were present.