Videograph voting to Chennai Corporation: HC

CHENNAI: The polling in all the booths in the Chennai Corporation area shall be compulsorily videographed, the Madras High Court ruled on Friday. Simultaneously, the authorities should examine the feasibility of webcasting the voting, the first bench comprising Chief Justice MY Eqbal and Justice TS Sivagnanam ruled.The bench was disposing of a batch of over 100 writ petitions and a public interest writ petition praying for a direction to this effect. The bench said that the State Election Commission (SEC), Chennai Corporation and the police should comply with the commitments made in the counter-affidavit of the SEC and the stipulations made in the circular dated October 9, this year.If possible, videographing and webcasting of polling in the sensitive booths in the rest of the State, as announced by the SEC in its notification dated October 15 last, should be done, the bench said.The SECs of other States, who had been invited to observe the election process and designated as independent observers, should be assigned areas forobservation in such a manner to cover the entire State and they should submit their reports to the SEC.The police personnel, who were drafted/requisitioned from Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra should be uniformly distributed along with State police to ensure that all polling booths which had been declared as sensitive ones are covered.The SEC might also requisition and deploy CRPF personnel, if necessary, to avoid any untoward incident.The SEC should take such other steps that might be required to ensure the conduct of elections in a free and fair manner without giving any room for complaints, the Bench added.