The presiding officer can relieve women employees after completion of polling. They need not have night halt at the polling booth or go with the polling party to deposit the election materials. They return home after seeing the polling centres, but on the polling day they should reach the polling booth at 5.30 am, as mock poll starts at 6n in the the morning.
Additional Collector MD Kanwre, at the second round of training held at JR Dani Girls Higher Secondary School here on Sunday, told the polling parties that if any voter claims that the vote he cast has gone to some other candidate, instead of the one he intended, he should be fully convinced that during mock poll, the machine has been examined and there is scope of error in it.
If the voter is still not convinced, before filling the declaration form he should be informed about the provisions of punishment under Section 177 of the Indian Penal Code, if his claim on test vote is proved wrong. Even then, he is adamant, after filling the declaration form in 49 MA, permission should be given to him for casting test vote. While test vote, if the claim of the voter is found to be true, polling should be stopped and its information should be given to the returning officer.
He said that after test vote, if the claim of the voter was found wrong, FIR should be registered against him. If the claim of the voter is proved wrong, a provision of six-month jail terms or ` 1,000 fine or both is there to punish.
If the polling team does not give information about the test vote or let the voter go at somebody’s behest, action would be taken against the polling team. There is a provision for two-year jail for this crime. He said that during the test vote, agent of the candidate, presiding officer, polling officer deployed for VSDU should be present with the voter.
The test vote should be registered in 17B register, in which number of test votes, serial number of voters, serial number of agent and number of votes should be mentioned. This information would be used at the time of recounting.
If the VVPAT machines are not functioning correctly at the time of polling and the printed slips are not coming out from the machine properly, polling should be stopped and action should be taken to change the machine. The polling officer deployed for VSDU should regularly view the monitor during the whole period of voting.