Chennai: Ahead of October polls Tamil Nadu political parties are demanding transparency in local body election process.
Several engineers are serving in the same posts for more than three years and after poll notification they will be the election returning officers.
The state election commission (SEC) remains tight-lipped on most of its election process and these officers should be transferred ahead of polls, demand political party functionaries.
According to official sources, there are hundreds of officers serving for more than three years in the same post at various local bodies and majority of them are engineers, who will be the presiding officers for civic polls.
“The DMK has already filed a petition in the Madras high court seeking court intervention to ensure transparency in local body polls. We know that several officers are pro-government and the party had already requested the state to conduct elections using central government staff serving in Tamil Nadu,” said Rajya Sabha MP and DMK spokesperson T.K.S. Elangovan.
“On Thursday, the district election officer in Chennai released the draft electoral rolls, but political party representatives were not served a copy of the rolls in the all-party meeting. When we insisted for a copy, corporation officials said engineers would give the copy later, but till now the copies have not reached the political party representatives”, said Congress functionary and former Deputy Mayor Karate R. Thiagarajan. The officers should remain neutral while serving during poll time.
