CHENNAI: As noisy campaigns and long-winding rallies came to end, the nuts and bolts of top parties have gone hyper local since 6pm on Tuesday. Between Tuesday evening till the conclusion of the polling, much of the action takes place at booth-levels, where agents and volunteers spend hours coordinating, visit door-to-door to distribute booth slips and ensure voters reach the booths and cast votes without any hitch.The city has 4,085 polling booths in 1,197 locations. The DMK has the highest number of booth-level agents (BLAs) in Tamil Nadu at 68,251, followed by AIADMK with 66,863 and BJP with 61,438.
Agents on a mission
DMK councillor Kavi Ganesan said DMK has 10 volunteers per booth coming under a booth-level committee. “One volunteer will cover 50 voters. Their job is to verify the rolls of their assigned voters, help people find their part and serial numbers, and also assist the elderly if they need help. These volunteers will be seated outside on streets with the rolls on tables,” he said. The BLA-1 plays an important role. He/she is the district secretary of the party, and can go into any booth within the district.
“We also have a BLA-2, who sits inside the booth. The BLA-2 will have a reliever to replace them. They monitor all activities inside the booth. We mostly place only DMK members as BLA-2 as we have been rigorously trained under various in-house party initiatives like Oraniyil Tamil Nadu on how to analyse rolls, identify malpractices with voters, as well as observers,” said Ganesan, adding that the allies are mostly posted outside as volunteers to help people. “The allies also have only fewer BLAs,” he said.AIADMK will have its men inside all the booths, leaving the peripheral roles such as verification of rolls and aid voters to its allies. “In Chennai, BJP and PMK have fewer volunteers. So, AIADMK takes care of the entire booth-level and street-level work,” said K Karthik, AIADMK councillor and son of MLA candidate K Kuppan. “We used to get trainings on such works till a decade ago. Now, we just pass on the knowledge to other members. People learn on the go,” he said.DMK also has booth-youth-agents to assist elderly and booth-digital-agents, who will maintain a digital record of all the happenings and update the party’s district secretary. Other parties don’t have such designated posts. VCK councillor B Yazhini, who has been posted as a supervisor, said the DMK will be in charge of entire booth work in the city. “Wherever VCK is strong, they have posted the party members as supervisors to monitor their voters. Our role is limited during polling day,” she said.The TVK has strengthened volunteer force in some localities, where their top brass is contesting. But this is not uniform in all constituencies. G V Sriram, TVK district executive member in Villivakkam, said they have one volunteer per 50 voter, similar to DMK. “We have deployed more booth volunteers here because of the candidate. It may vary constituency to constituency,” he said.
