TN CEO directs authorities to ensure uninterrupted power supply at strong rooms for EVMs

Chennai, May 10 , 2024 : Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer Satyabrata Sahoo has directed the authorities to ensure uninterrupted power supply in all the strong rooms across the state where the EVMs were kept after the April 19 polling for the Lok
Sabha elections. The counting will take place on June 4. Mr Sahoo’s directive comes at a time when there were reports in some districts about malfunctioning of CCTV cameras installed in counting Centres and strong rooms, resulting in political parties
lodging complaints with the Election Commission to ensure safety of the EVMs. Mr Sahoo, who held a review meeting through video conferencing with the District Election Officers, Returning Officers, Commissioners of Police, Superintendents of Police, District level Engineers of PWD (Civil and Electrical) to review the EVM strong room security arrangements, said he has instructed the authorities to ensure uninterrupted power supply in all the strong rooms, besides installing additional CCTV cameras to ensure fool proof security. In a statement here, he said as per the instructions of ECI, the contesting candidates or their representatives are allowed to watch the security arrangements of the Strong Room through the CCTV display facility provided at the counting centres. The CCTV cameras were already fixed on the outside of every Strong Room Door having the polled EVMs (Apart from this the entire counting center are covered under general surveillance by adequate number of CCTV cameras for overall security purpose). In order to ensure un-interrupted CCTV footage, all the DEOs/ROs have been instructed to make arrangements for fixing of one additional CCTV camera in front of the door of each Strong Room having the polled EVMs in the counting centers (with separate dedicated line, switch,
Router, NVR and TV) for viewing CCTV footage enabling the political party agent to view the footage (even if there is failure in the other CCTV cameras fixed in front of Strong Room Door having the polled EVMs installed already).