50 percent polling cards not delivered to Jaffna MC Voters

[TamilNet, Thursday, 06 August 2009, 08:54 GMT]
About fifty percent of the polling cards sent by the Jaffna District Election Department have not been delivered till Wednesday to the recipients and are kept in the general post office waiting for the owners to come and collect by proving their identity. Voters have been asked to obtain their polling cards from the post office till 3 p.m. on August 8, on the polling day, Jaffna District Returning Officer and Government Agent Mr. K. Ganesh said a t a press briefing about the forthcoming election to the Jaffna Municipal Council.

Election Department had handed over 94,086 polling cards to the Jaffna general post office to be delivered to legally entitled voters to cast their franchise in the forthcoming Jaffna MC election.

Only 54,339 polling cards have been delivered.

But the postal employees had returned 41747 polling cards to the post office stating that they could not deliver them to the recipients as they were not available in the said address found in the polling cards. Hence the returned polling cards are kept in the post office.

Meanwhile, civil society sources fear that the return of half the number of polling cards could lead to mass scale vote rigging and impersonation by parties contesting the election with the State machinery.