40% of eligible voters live out of Jaffna Municipal Council

[TamilNet, Friday, 07 August 2009, 05:17 GMT]
Postal department sources in Jaffna said that 40,390 polling cards of the 100,417 eligible voters in the Jaffna Municipal Council (JMC) election to be held Saturday are kept in Jaffna Post Office not delivered to the rightful recipients. A total of 51,182 polling cards have been delivered directly to persons in the last nine days by postal employees going house to house, the sources further said.

Only 7,170 polling cards had been delivered in Eachchamoaddai and Kozhumpuththu’rai areas where people had been displaced due to war while 9,242 remain undelivered.

3,676 polling cards have been delivered in Ariyaalay area while 4,128 are not delivered.

In Naavaanthuthu’rai 10,252 polling cards remain undelivered with only 5,160 delivered.

70 polling booths have been set up within JMC limits while one has been erected in Ariyaalay for the 70 Vanni IDPs in the camps in Chaavakachcheari area who had applied to vote.

Meanwhile, 5930 voters living out of Jaffna district have applied for voting and polling booths for these persons have been set up in Anuradhapura, Puththa’lam, Gampaha, Colombo and Ka’luththu’rai.

A total of 330 persons have applied for postal voting.