Chennai: Electronic voting machines for the ensuing Assembly polls arrived for The Nilgiris and Salem districts from Maharashtra on Saturday.
The state requires about 75,000 EVMs for elections from other states and there are already about 8,000 machines available in Tamil Nadu, Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni said. For Chennai, which has 22 Assembly constituencies, the ballot and control units, will arrive by the month end. For The Nilgiris, 1,900 control and ballot units have arrived, he said.
According to election department sources, the EVMs will be stored in government buildings and a team of certified engineers will check the machines and repair the faulty ones in a phased manner. For Salem, 2,700 control units and the same number of ballot units are to be used and overall demand for Tamil Nadu would be 82,000, including about 10 per cent reserve. Another set of 50,000 EVMs are to come from Bihar next week, ECI sources said.
The election department had also sent communiqués to all district collectors directing them to work as district election officers and prepare a road map and plan of action for elections.
A few districts have already started the basic works and the first phase of training for government staff to be deployed on poll duty had also begun and more such trainings are in the pipeline, sources added.
