Chennai: Officials of Chennai corporation and state public elections department who were in charge of the high-profile RK Nagar bypoll were stunned by the late night postponement of polls. Close to 600 state officials ranging from civic engineers, revenue officials and grade D employees like drivers, office assistants were involved in the logistics of polls. After draining our resources and energy for the last one month our efforts has gone waste, rued a corporation engineers in north Chennai.
The top brass of the corporation also passed oral orders on Monday morning pulling back hundreds of its employees deputed to north Chennai and cancelled the jobs outsourced for R K Nagar polls. “Advance payments were also made for hiring shamianas, chairs and bubble top water cans for the polling booths, this is something like calling a wedding off in the last minute resulting in huge loss of money for the corporation”, said a ward engineer serving in R K Nagar constituency.
“The work schedule was so tight with inspections and monitoring bypoll observers. Corporation commissioner D. Karthikeyan, a senior IAS officer, was often seen wearing chappals avoiding shoes.
Similar was the situation with exhausted civic engineers as the work schedule stretched for more than 16 hours”, rued a corporation official adding that training programmes for web camera agents, booth agents and presiding officers went on till Sunday evening.
Skipping lunch was something common for corporation drivers deputed to RK Nagar and those driving for observers and flying squads were under constant stress due to severe traffic and reduced sleeping hours. Everything has gone waste, said a corporation driver based in Ripon Buildings.
