Four election supervisors have been replaced in the past 15 days in the Coimbatore district due to an increase in political clashes and subsequent tensions. The DMK is very particular in bagging seats in Coimbatore, as the party has no MLAs from the district. On the other hand, AIADMK is working to sustain the success that they saw in Coimbatore, during the Assembly elections.
BJP, that is contesting alone, is of the aim to atleast get a sizeable number of ward councillors through this elections, and is therefore working towards the same, just like the other Dravidian parties. In this light, the state election commission officials are caught in the middle with the ruling party on the one side and the opposition parties on the other. They are unaware of the steps they need to take, because which ever side they lean towards, they will end up facing trouble.
It is being reported that even IAS officers are not comfortable coming to this region to become an election supervisor. In a way to confirm this report, almost 4 Election Supervisors have been replaced in Coimbatore in just the past 15 days.
When supervisors were allocated for all the 38 districts on February 1, IAS officer Mariam Pallavi Baldev was appointed for this region. However, it is being said that she could not make it to the region because she was unwell. She was then replaced by IAS officer Har Sahay Meena, who was doing a good job, supervising polling booths and vote counting booths. While the reason is still unclear, she was replaced by Pawan Kumar Panchal, on Saturday.
Many in the region were not even aware of the placement of this IAS officer. Only when he participated in a number of supervisions, including the checking of Postal vote boxes, did many authorities discover that he was the new Election Supervisor. However, even he is replaced by an IAS Officer, Govinda Rao, who is now the Electoral Supervisor for Kovai. He has started performing his duties in Kovai from yesterday.
With just 3 days left for the Elections, political clashes and enmity between the political parties have increased, resulting in widespread fear. So, the question at stake here is whether this IAS officer will be able to sustain until the elections.
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