The process of casting votes for the 2019 Parliamentary polls through postal ballet for nearly three million defence and paramilitary personnel began on Friday from remote Northeastern town of Lohitpur in Arunachal Pradesh, over 2,600 km away from the national Capital.
With the Election Commission taking a series of measures to enroll maximum number of service voters, the count of such votes is expected in large numbers. DIG of Animal Training School of ITBP Sudhakar Natarajan cast the first vote at Lohitpur on Friday.
“This year, the Election Commission has taken many steps to add more and more service voters in the process. Awareness campaigns through electronic, social, print and other media was given due attention for the last one year. This would probably be for the first time that a large number of service voters are expected to exercise their franchise,” ITBP spokesperson Vivek Pandey said in a statement.
The first vote of the country of the Lok Sabha Polls 2019 was casted in Arunachal Pradesh by service voters. A remote Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) unit located in the eastern tip of North East, has started the service voting by secret postal ballot on Friday at Lohitpur, he said.
This is for the first vote of India that service vote has been cast from Animal Training School of ITBP at Lohitpur for many constituencies in India. After the voting, ballot papers were dispatched to Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Bangalore, Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and many other places.
Other ITBP units deployed in the Arunchal Pradesh also casted their votes through postal ballot.
The ballot paper for the service voters only identifies the name of the candidates along with their photos and the political parties they represent but do not have party symbols. It is bilingual, one language being English and the other one is the one prevalent in a particular constituency. The ballot is folded and put inside an envelope and after sealing it, the same is collected in front of the senior most officer of the unit and then oraganised in a bag and sent to the nearest post office for onward transmission through Speed Post, Natarajan said.