Tamil Nadu: Agents linked to political parties keep a close watch on EVMs before counting day

K Veerakumar, 42, is on a very long leave from his private company just to watch live CCTV footage of a lock and seal guarding EVMs stored for the Chennai South constituency. It’s been more than 40 days that he has been on this duty for Tamil Nadu’s Opposition All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) candidate J Jayavardhan. “Party comes first for me,” says Veerakumar. Thousands of agents like him representing state’s political parties — DMK, AIADMK, BJP, NTK and independent candidates are working in shifts to monitor the strongrooms 24x7. The wait for counting of votes has been the longest in this southern state which went to Lok Sabha polls in the first phase on April 19. It’s exactly 46 days until counting on June 4.

People aware of the matter said every candidate has roped in two to three agents to work in shifts of 8-12 hours. Jayavardhan has one of the highest number of agents — six AIADMK workers double up to work in three shifts round the clock. The DMK and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) here have a total of three agents to work a shift each while there are two independent agents. They monitor the strong rooms for the South Chennai Lok Sabha constituency housed inside the city’s premier institution Anna University. “We have become like family,” says Veerakumar of making friends with agents from rival parties who were engaged in a bitter election campaign. The time spent here brought them close. “We talk a lot about our parties, our candidates. We debate, we gossip, but there is no fight,” he says. Chennai South is one of the most watched constituencies where Jayavardhan who won the seat in 2014 has contested against former governor Tamilisai Soundararajan who is the BJP candidate and incumbent DMK MP Tamizhachi Thangapandian.

At the start of his shift at 10am, Veerakumar and his peers from other parties go together to check on the lock and seal accompanied by the tahsildar and a police personnel. “We have to sign in at least 10 places before we reach the door,” Veerakumar says. The primary job of these agents is to watch the CCTV footage of the lock and seal of these strong rooms and alert election officials and party candidates if there is anything amiss.

Initially, the agents here were sitting on plastic chairs under a tent on the campus. “Due to the heat, we requested the district collector to let us stay indoors,” Veerakumar said. From April 24 onwards, these agents moved inside a classroom on the ground floor where the Greater Chennai Corporation provided them with 10 pedestal fans, a water dispenser and two monitors which would relay footage from two CCTV cameras.

The political party agents across the state received passes valid from April 19 night–when the EVMs were moved from voting centres to strong rooms–until 6am on June 4–when the EVMs would be shifted to 39 counting centres. The counting will be conducted in rooms adjacent to the strong rooms in the same buildings and preparations for which are in full swing in Tamil Nadu.

The passes allow the agents to be inside the heavily secured buildings to monitor the 234 strong rooms where EVMs are stored across Tamil Nadu. The state has 39 parliamentary constituencies. The EVMs of each Lok Sabha constituency are stored by dividing them into assembly constituencies which are 234 in Tamil Nadu. No one is allowed inside the strong room. The buildings where they are stored are cut off from everything where only election officials, security personnel, candidates and their agents are allowed. Every strong room door is locked and sealed and guarded by about 1,300 CRPF deployed across Tamil Nadu round the clock, said chief electoral officer Satyabrata Sahoo. So far, across Tamil Nadu there have been half a dozen complaints of the footage stopping due to power outages. “In the initial days, we received complaints from three districts that due to heating of the electrical circuit, rains and thunder, some fuse (of the CCTV) stopped working so we asked the electrical systems to be strengthened with lightning arrester,” said Sahoo. “We have been guarding them for more than 40 days. It is a long period for us too and it has been smooth,” said Sahoo.

The scene in Coimbatore parliamentary constituency which is witnessing another high stakes battle with BJP’s Tamil Nadu president K Annamalai as candidate is quite different from the camaraderie among agents in Chennai South. “We are not close,” says K L Swaminathan (53) one of Annamalai’s agents deployed to watch the footage. “We greet each other, sit in our respective chairs and just monitor. It’s an eight hour shift and it’s important work so our time goes by fast.” Swaminathan is an old hand who has been with the party for 27 years. “But, this is the longest number of days I’ve done this work.” Swaminathan is a full time party worker. The strong room is inside the Government College of Technology. On May 31, he also inspected the counting centre in the adjacent room since Swaminathan will also be Annamalai’s agent on June 4 when votes are counted. “The tables, speakers, and cameras are all ready,” he says. With Annamalai away campaigning across India, BJP’s Coimbatore district president Ramesh Kumar liaisons between him and the party agents. “We have three agents working three shifts,” says Kumar. “There is no pay involved for any party’s agents because this is part of party work. We arrange food for them and ensure that they have 16 hours of rest after eight hours of work.”

But, there are those who are voluntarily doing this work with no rest while reporting for their day job. 35-year-old M Tamilarasan is a field officer in a private company in Villupuram district. He completes his day job and reports for night duty to watch CCTV footage of Villupuram’s incumbent MP- K Ravikumar of the VCK (a DMK ally) had contested. On May 4, when Tamilarasan’s shift ending in the morning, he saw that a power outage stopped the recording of the CCTV. “I was about to leave. It happened at 7.28 am and the issue was corrected at 8.10 am,” Tamilarasan says with precision.

Following this and three other incidents, CEC Sahoo instructed state departments to back up all 234 strong rooms with efficient generators and an additional CCTV camera was installed in each of the strong rooms.

While several agents have been passing their time by watching Youtube videos, Instagram reels, cell phones were banned at the Aringar Anna Arts and Science College where Tamilarasan is on duty. “After we reported that incident the district officials did not want us to take photos so we had to leave our mobiles at the gate with the police,” he says.

Tamilarasan who has as M Ed and M. Phil degree has been using this time to complete reading books and preparing for exams to the Teachers Recruitment Board. There is another VCK agent who is attempting to complete Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s collection while a 65-year-old AIADMK candidate, he says, simply enjoys sitting through the shift. These agents have had a key role to play in India’s long seven phase electoral process and are now keenly waiting for the results.