The urban local body polls in Tamil Nadu are inching towards the end and amid reporting a setback in voters turnout, Tamil Nadu BJP President Annamalai waged an attack against the state election commission only to have it boomeranged against him. While his tweet had caught attention, it had later lost its life following a clarification from the election commission. 

On Saturday afternoon, Annamalai took to Twitter and claimed that Union Minister and BJP Leader L Murugan's vote was cast by someone else. By alleging voter fraud, Annamalai wrote, "The level to which official machinery is misused is too obvious today. (DMK) party members distributing cash right outside polling centre in Coimbatore & across TN. Hon Min Shri Murugan avl vote casted by someone else in his polling booth in Anna Nagar East, Chennai." 

He asked the State Election Commissioner whether he will take action now. His tweet about voter fraud where a fake vote was cast for Murugan had drawn major attention. However, it has later come to the revelation that the polling booth in Anna Nagar East has two people under the name of Murugan. A commoner named Murugan had cast his vote which Annamalai thought was a fake vote for BJP's L Murugan. 

As his tweet was going viral, Tamil Nadu State Election Commission has issued a clarification in which it has affirmed that no one has cast L Murugan's vote. It has said, "No has cast a fake vote for Union Minister of State L Murugan. He has to come and cast his vote." Following the clarification, L Murugan had come to the polling booth and cast his vote. 

The Union Minister had even posed for a photograph outside the booth after casting the vote following which Annamalai was slammed by the netizens for his inaccurate tweet that Murugan's vote was a fake. According to reports, the discrepancy has happened after the poll agents had mistakenly registered P Murugan's vote as L Murugan. After a probe, the police have affirmed that it was the fault of poll agents and L Murugan's voting right wasn't compromised. 

The police also said that L Murugan would come and cast his vote in the evening hours of Saturday. As announced, Murugan came and cast his vote with no trouble. The voting began at 7 am on Saturday - February 19 and ended at 7 pm, with the last one hour has been reserved for the voters who have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Urban areas across 38 districts have been polling to elect the representatives and the Tamil Nadu Election Commission had installed surveillance cameras to monitor the polling stations and the state government had deployed over 1 lakh police personnel for security purposes. As the pollings happened amid the spread of Covid-19, the Election Commission has rolled out adequate measures and instructions and appealed to the people to adhere to them. Voting has taken place in 31,150 polling stations and following the voting, the voting machines will be escorted to the respective counting centres and the votes will be counted on February 22.