Chennai Feb 21 PTI The Madras High Court on Monday refused to restrain the authorities concerned from counting the votes polled in the elections held on February 19 for the Coimbatore Corporation along with other urban local bodies in Tamil Nadu Counting of votes is scheduled for Tuesday The first bench of Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice D Bharatha Chakravarthy which rejected the interim plea however said the election of the successful candidates would be subject to the outcome of a PIL petition which sought to cancel the elections and to hold them afresh The bench was entertaining a petition from V Eswaran founder of Marumalarchi Makkal Iyakkam who prayed for a direction to the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission TNSEC and the authority in Coimbatore to cancel the election held for the Corporation and form a committee headed by a judge of the High Court to probe alleged incidents of rampant distribution of cash to voters by considering his representation and to hold it afresh Originally the petitioner had moved the local authorities to permit him to campaign against bribing the voters but it was rejected by them on February 7 He moved the High Court and the first bench last week had directed the authorities to consider his plea He was granted permission only on February 16 and left with just one day to campaign In his present petition Easwaran alleged that there was large-scale bribing of voters All the political parties in the race distributed cash and freebies to the voters If the counting is allowed to be done on Tuesday and the result declared dishonest people who had mocked the democratic process would come to power In such circumstances unless the same is restrained the residents of our Corporation would be put into irreparable loss and hardships he contended and sought to restrain the authorities from counting the votes polled and declaring the results which was turned down by the bench today The matter is adjourned for two weeks PTI COR SA ROH ROH

Chennai Feb 20 PTI Tamil Nadu registered a poll percentage of 6070 per cent in the February 19 urban local bodies election that witnessed an interesting multi-cornered contest with the constituents of the opposition AIADMK alliance contesting on their respective partys own strengths rather than remaining together against the DMK combine Among the 21 corporations which went to polls the Greater Chennai Corporation registered the lowest turnout of 4359 per cent while Karur polled the maximum of 7584 per cent on Saturday according to the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission TNSEC The single-phase election was held to fill up 12838 posts in 21 corporations 138 municipalities 490 town panchayats and 649 urban local bodies in the state A total of 74416 candidates including many independents entered the fray Among the municipalities Dharmapuri registered an impressive turnout of 8137 per cent and Nilgiris recorded the lowest voter turnout of 5998 per cent the SEC said On the whole the town panchayats and municipalities recorded a good voter turnout of 7468 per cent and 6822 per cent respectively while the highly urbanised corporations saw a low turnout of 5222 per cent The electoral fortunes of the candidates of various political parties and independents as well will be known on February 22 when the SEC takes up the counting of votes The local body elections in TN were held after more than a decade The polls were last conducted in 2011 when the AIADMK was in power in the state PTI JSP HDA HDA

Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], February 19 (ANI): Makkal Needhi Maiam chief Kamal Haasan cast his vote for the local body elections at a government school in Chennai's Teynampet on Saturday.

Chennai Jan 25 PTI The Madras High Court on Tuesday gave its nod to hold elections to urban local bodies in Tamil Nadu and said it will monitor the conduct of the polls in the state Holding that the elections cannot be ordered to be deferred the first bench dismissed the PIL petitions on the issue The bench of Acting Chief Justice M N Bhandari and Justice P D Audikesavalu which rejected the plea said the State government and the Tamil Nadu State Election Commission can go ahead with the polls after observing all the Covid-19 protocols and guidelines issued by the central government strictly The High Court would also closely monitor the conduct of the elections the bench said The parties more particularly the State government are at liberty to move the Supreme Court with a plea to grant more time to hold the elections if they desire so the bench said as it was the Apex Court which had stipulated the time limit The SC had stipulated that the Tamil Nadu government should announce the election schedule for the urban local bodies in four months which comes to an end on January 27 The PILs from Dr M Nakkeeran former Joint Director of the Health department and another person sought the court to postpone the polls in view of the spurt in Covid-19 cases due to the third wave The petitioners had contended the TNSEC was not taking stock of the ground reality on the surging Covid infections It had not even reviewed the number of containment zones in the places where the polls were proposed to be held The safety of the citizens would be at stake if the polls were conducted and no harm would be caused if it was postponed beyond two months when the situation eased or improved When the Supreme Court had set the deadline for holding the polls the pandemic situation then was different In the interest of public health and safety the polls should be deferred they added TNSEC counsel had earlier submitted that the poll notification ought to be issued by January 27 as per the orders of the Supreme Court All precautionary measures and standard operating procedures that were in place following issuance of a notification earlier for holding the elections to the local bodies in rural areas would be strictly enforced now too he had added PTI CORR SA SA SS SS