Chennai: The returning officers in charge of Aravakkurichi, Thanjavur and Thiruparankundram assembly constituencies on Saturday notified the final list of candidates in fray for the bypolls scheduled on Nov. 19.
"In Aravakurichi 39 candidates are in fray followed by Thiruparankundram and Thanjavur with 28 and 14 candidates respectively", chief electoral officer Rajesh Lakhoni told reporters. With this 81 candidates will be in the fray for the polls and the district election officers are likely to begin the fixing of ballot papers with the EVM units by next week, election department sources said.
Meanwhile, the Election commission of India on Saturday announced that it will conduct a pilot trial of Electronic Transmitted Postal Ballot for service voters in the by-election at Nellithope Assembly Constituency, Puducherry to be held on November 19.
A press release issued by ECI director Dhirendra Ojha explained that currently, physical ballot papers are sent to the service voters and the cast votes are received back through the post. This, at times, is proving time-consuming and causing delays. Keeping this limitation in mind, the ECI has entrusted Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a government undertaking working under the aegis of MeitY, Government of India to undertake the development of one-way postal ballot delivery through the electronic medium.
C-DAC has developed the "Electronic Transmitted Postal Ballot" delivery system, wherein, the service voters will be receiving the downloadable postal ballot through two-layer secure electronic medium with a One Time Password (OTP) and unique Personal Identification Number (PIN).
