Piravom-poll: Public campaign ends on a high note


 Thursday, March 15, 2012: The high-voltage public campaign for the Piravom by-election scheduled on March 17 has ended on a high note on Thursday evening. UDF candidate Anoop Jacob, BJP candidate K. R. Rajagopal and LDF candidate M J Jacob completed their last round of public campaigning.
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and several of his Ministers, as well as a slew of senior UDF leaders, campaigned in the constituency speaking at meetings after meetings.
On the LDF side, the list of top leaders included Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan, Pinarayi Vijayan, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, C.K. Chandrappan, Pannian Raveendran, Mathew T. Thomas, C. Diwakaran and Ramachandran Kadannappally.
The Election Commission has deployed 30 Central government officials as micro observers for the election. They will be given training to announce the result after nine rounds of counting spread over 14 tables. Facilities, including closed circuit televisions, will be readied to monitor the progress of counting. 21 polling booths have been identified as sensitive in the Piravom Assembly constituency.
District Collector P.I. Sheikh Pareed, who is also the district election officer, has given instructions to pass on information about officials who fail to turn up for duty.
The by-poll was necessitated by the death of Kerala Congress (J) leader T.M. Jacob. Death of Jacob in October had further eroded the elected strength of the UDF in the assembly to 71 including the Speaker against 68 seats held by the CPI(M)-led LDF opposition.

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