Cuttack district, which was chosen this time as a pilot district to encourage disabled voters to exercise their franchise in large numbers, accomplished its mission as desired. Disabled voters’ turnout on Thursday’s polling in the district registered an envious 94.18 per cent against the average turnout in the district pegged at 70 per cent. The district had registered a poor disabled voters’ turnout of only 64 per cent in 2009.
Out of 18,719 disabled voters in the nine Assembly segments of the district, 17,631 of them turned out to exercise their franchise, said Cuttack Collector-cum-District Election Officer Girish SN on Friday.
While all the 2,000-odd booths in the district were provided with wheel chairs and ramps along with volunteers to assist the physically handicapped voters to comfortably exercise their franchise, special arrangements were made for the visually and hearing impaired voters in each booth. The blind voters voted with specially designed Braille ballot papers and experts in sign language assisted the hearing impaired voters.