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Fresh
polls, if election is rigged, warns Polls Chief
Addressing District Secretaries on the conduct of the April 2 polls, the Elections Commissioner said that his warning was in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling. Earlier, the practice had been to simply annul the votes of a booth where rigging had taken place and no fresh elections were held. An Election Department official said that in the event fresh voting had been ordered for a particular booth, the announcement of the results of the entire district would be delayed. Meanwhile, the Commissioner has invited foreign monitors from Bangladesh, Pakistan, the European Union, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Association of Asian Election Observers. A request from local polls observers that they be deployed in all polling booths was also being considered, an official said. The Commissioner of Elections is also due to hold talks with head of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission Chief Trond Furhovde to look into the possibility of conducting elections in the LTTE-controlled areas. Mr. Dissanayake told the District Secretaries from the Northern and Eastern province at a separate meeting that taking into consideration a Supreme Court ruling that the voters in uncleared areas should be given an equal opportunity to cast their vote, he would be meeting the SLMM chief as well as officials of the Government Peace Secretariat tomorrow. The GAs had pointed out that there could be practical problems in allowing hundreds of thousands of voters in the uncleared areas and getting them to vote within eight hours. The Supreme Court in a recent fundamental rights case ruled that the Army action in preventing voters from uncleared areas from crossing into cleared areas to vote was a violation of their fundamental rights. A decision with regard to holding elections in uncleared areas is to be taken on Tuesday. |
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