Chief Electoral Officer holds meet, inform political parties regarding provisions of ECI

Ranchi: Chief Electoral Officer Vinay Kumar Choubey held a meeting with the representatives of the political parties during which he informed them regarding the new provisions which have been laid down by the Election Commission of India.

Addressing the meeting he said that the election commission has included many new provisions in conduct of election rules which are being implemented for the first time in the Assembly elections of Jharkhand and these provisions have to be informed to the people also in which the political parties can play an important role.

He said that the commission has made arrangements of Postal ballots for Divyang voters and voters who are more than 80 years of age, similarly at the polling booth token system and Booth app have been launched in which the political parties should play an active role to inform the voters.

He said that the facilities which are available for the Divyang and old age voters earlier would continue to remain the same in these elections also however for the first time they are being provided the facility of postal ballot and to take its advantage they will have to inform the concerned electoral officer of their area five days till the process of nomination filing is on after which a list of area wise such voters would be prepared.

After the list is prepared polling team will be formed which would reach to the house of the concerned voter and hand in the postal ballot and also detail about the entire election process he said adding that the Divyang voters have to be also in provided with the postal ballots however those Divyang and old age voters who would have given their consent to cast their votes through the postal ballots will not be allowed to go to the polling booth and cast their votes again.

Mr Choubey said that for the convenience of the voters arrangements of token system at the polling booths is being made according to which they would be provided token and on the basis of the token number they would be allowed to vote however this will be not applicable for the Divyang old age and young mothers as they would be allowed to cast their vote on a priority basis.

The Chief Electoral Officer said that for the first time Booth app is being used in this elections and for an experimental point of view it would be used in 15 assembly areas. He said that in this app voter slip along with the photographs will be given with QR code and on the date of the election the polling personnel and the BLO will be scanning the QR code through the booth app through which all the information related to the voter would be available and this would help to save the time involved in the process to the casting of the votes.

Additional chief electoral officer Kripa Nand Jha detailed the representatives of the political parties regarding the provisions right from the time of the nominations to the date of the counting and what procedures needed to be followed. He also asked them to ensure that the guidelines of the election commission are followed by them.