Several voters of Ranchi had to face “hurdles” in casting their votes for the 16th lok Sabha elections on Thursday. Names of many voters were missing from the electoral roll at majority of polling booths, while ramps for physically challenged and the elderly people were unavailable in some of them. Visually impaired residents in one of these polling centres could not cast votes due to district administration’s negligence.
Vinod Kumar whose polling centre was 258 at SS Memorial College said, “I am living here from past 13 years and have my voter ID card too. Ironically, this time my name is not in the voters list. I called on the Election Commission toll free number but to no avail.”
Similarly, Anil Kumar, resident of Harmu Colony was struggling at polling booth in Kumhar toli to find why the names of his mother and wife were missing from the electoral roll. He said, “My ailing mother came to exercise her voting rights but irony is that her name is not there in the final list. Moreover, we submitted the form together to apply for voters ID card. Only my name is there in the voters list.”
Meanwhile, some of the denizens also complained Booth level Officer (BlO) for not distributing the slip on time. Rajesh Kumar irritated with the chaos at a polling station said, “Earlier I did not check the roll because BlOs use to hand over the slip to us. This time I did not receive the slip. When I reached the polling station in the morning I was shocked to find my name missing from the roll.”
A 65 year old voter at booth number 260 (Kanke) who had been casting vote past two decades was unable to find his name here. He said, “I requested a young boy of my locality to search my name in CEO’s website. It was then I found that my name is included in the voters list of booth number 283 at Edalhatu. I cannot reach there as my entire family members were voting in Kanke’s polling centre.”
Surprisingly, the district public relations officer claimed that they had not received any such “troublesome” complaints. “The name of many of the voters was not updated in the list. But there are rare chances that a person with voter card could not vote just because his or her name was not mentioned in the voter chart of particular booth,” he said.
Besides, physically challenged voters also had a harrowing experience at the polling booths. Despite Election Commission’s instruction to polling officers to ensure special arrangements for them, not much to have been seemed changed.
Arshad Khan, an amputee explaining his ordeal said, “This time I was not allowed to take the motor-cycle inside the porch like previous year. I had to travel long distance negotiating for four odds step wait in long queue to cast my vote. There was no ramp and no passage with enough width for the wheelchair user.”
Similar to Arshad, around 22 visually impaired senior citizens of St Michael School for Blind had to undergo terrible experience in the absence of required facilities.
The introduction of Braille manuscript on Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) from this time proved a failure for them at booth number 201. None of the EVMs had the facility of this manuscript which created a panic ambience.
Describing the woe, St Michael School for Blind’s hostel warden Rajkumar Nagwanshi said, “Our each blind voter had to wait for 30 minutes in the booth. It was because their votes were
casted on behalf of their
assistants who had to register themselves by the presiding officer and then press button on the EVM.”
“As a result, other voters were forced to wait for their turn due to this voting process. On the other hand, our aged dwellers who make sure to cast vote in all the elections were not at all satisfied as always since they were doubtful on whether their assistant had voted the candidate of their
preference or not,” the hostel warden added.
According to sources, these visually impaired voters were hopeful to vote all by themselves for the first time after election commission had announced this “good news of Braille voting” for them. The senior most voter of this cadre was 97 years old and the youngest was around 40 years old. 12 out of these 22 voters were women.
However, district administration officials in charge of this management blamed the institution and said that it is the responsibility of the latter to inform them about the blind voters. “I have myself pasted Braille manuscript stickers in two or three EVMs. It is not possible to miss the booth where voting is done on routine basis by the visually impaired individuals. The institution must not have submitted its requirements,” a staff at the Deputy Commissioner’s office said.