Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai on Friday claimed that there were complaints from a large number of voters in his constituency - Coimbatore - who said their names were missing from the voters' list. "We are demanding a re-poll in places where the names of a large number of voters were missing," he said.
Tamil Nadu's 39 seats went to polls in the first phase on April 19. The state recorded a voter turnout of 69.72 per cent, while the turnout in Coimbatore was 64.89 per cent.
Annamalai, the BJP's candidate for the Coimbatore seat, said there were suspicions that there was some political interference as the names of numerous BJP cadres were missing from the voters' list.
India Today reported that polling began at 7 am on Friday, but voters in Tamil Nadu arrived at the polling stations as early as 6.30 am.
Noted Supreme Court lawyer J Sai Deepak in a tweet claimed that the number of people in Tamil Nadu "who have been removed from voter lists or are being prevented from voting by the DMK agents is staggering". He said "surnames" and localities are used to determine if they could vote for the BJP.
Deepak, however, said that this election is seeing several first time voters, especially the educated ones, who want a change of guard. "People are forming groups to drive elderly citizens to polling booths. This is telling and heartening," he wrote on X.
In Coimbatore, a traditional Left stronghold, Annamalai is up against AIADMK's Singai G Ramachandran and DMK leader Ganapathi Rajkumar. Ganapathi is a former mayor of Coimbatore.
As many as 190 companies of Central Armed Police Forces and 1.3 lakh police personnel were deployed for the polls. Further, 3,32,233 polling personnel were on election duty. Around 6.23 crore voters were eligible to cast their votes to decide the fate of 950 candidates in the fray in Tamil Nadu.