Coimbatore: CCTV cameras installed in a strong room at LRG Govt College for Women in Tirupur, where electronic voting machines and voter-verified paper audit trails are stored after the assembly election, malfunctioned for two and half hours on Saturday night.A section of TVK cadres staged a protest in front of the strong room, seeking a clarification from election officials regarding the incident. Electronic voting machines and voter-verified paper audit trails from all the eight assembly constituencies are kept in as many strong rooms at LRG Govt College for Women in that district. Political party agents said CCTV cameras at one of the strong rooms hadn’t functioned for two and half hours on Saturday night. All the CCTV cameras were linked to the control room. According to agents belonging to BJP, monitor at the control room displayed a message that “failed to find a network host,” raising serious concerns about the transparency and authenticity of the election. “ECI has fixed more than 200 CCTV cameras at the counting centre and all the CCTV cameras were not functioning for more than two and half hours. Later, the cameras started to work automatically. When we checked the CCTV visuals, we found that the timing of the recording was wrong,” said an agent. Officials, however, attributed the issue to minor network issues and a failure to reset the timings of CCTV cameras. Alleging irregularities, TVK candidate in Tirupur South constituency S S Balamurugan, along with his party members, besieged the counting centre. Tirupur district election officer cum district collector Manish S Narnaware said the inner perimeter was completely sealed and no one could enter the strong room. “Trespassing is just speculation raised by the parties. The timeline delay was from the vendor, which was rectified right in the morning. In the evening, candidates were taken along to witness the security levels at the strong room.”
