The much awaited Executive Committee elections of Federation of Jharkhand Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FJCCI) which started with zeal and excitement on Sunday, was cancelled later in the day following technical glitches in the polling system. This is for the first time that computerized voting system was introduced in the FJCCI elections.
The voting started as per the plan at 9 am and around 50 per cent voters had polled their votes till 2 pm. However, soon afterwards, the computer systems stopped working. Following this, former FJCCI president and Supervisor of the polling, Bishnu Budhia halted the polling for the glitch to be sorted. Unfortunately, when the problem could not be detected by 4:30 pm, Budhia held a meeting with both the contesting teams and decided to cancel the elections.
Later in the evening it was decided that the re-election would be conducted on September 15.
The two teams contesting elections were led by incumbent Secretary General FJCCI Kunal Azmani and noted businessmen Kishore Mantri, respectively. Following the cancellation of the elections, a member of Mantri’s group, RD Singh, said that voters have cast their votes for change but due to glitches in system polling was stopped.
This is the 57th Executive Committee election of FJCCI since its inception in 1960. Budhia said that a total of 3414 members of the trader community will elect the 21 member committee including a president, two vice presidents, a secretary general, honorary secretary, two joint secretaries and one treasurer. “Other than this, 6 vice presidents will be elected from their respective regions from the State. Rest of the elected members will be executive committee members,” he added.
“First time in this election a computerised voting system was used to conduct fair and hassle free elections. Earlier the elections were conducted on ballot papers. The voting was done at Marwari Bhawan situated at Harmu Road in the State Capital. Unlike earlier, this time the counting was supposed to take place on the same day after a gap of half an hour of voting and the supervisor committee was to announce the results on the same day too,” said Budhia.
Informing about the voting process the election Supervisor said that in attempt to conduct fair election, the Chamber made a new rule this time that the voter will have to verify their identity at first then he can get voting slip to cast their vote. “For this two online counters were installed. A total of 30 computerised polling system were also installed at the polling center to conduct fast polling as one voter have to vote for 21 posts and there is no option like NOTA (non of the above),” he added.