Higher polling percentage in Assembly elections seems to have given a clue to the State Election Commission (SEC) about increasing polling percentage in elections. The commission has decided to introduce new measures in municipal elections for eight urban-local-bodies (UlB) and reach out to voters to bring them to the polling stations much the same way as was done during elections to higher bodies.
The decision was made during a review meeting conducted by SEC with deputy commissioners and superintends of police of 10 districts on Saturday here. The SEC directed DCs to assign booth-level-officers (BlO) the task of distributing voter’s slip at the doorstep of voters in each municipal ward. The door-to-door campaign will be introduced for the first in municipal elections, said State Election Commissioner, Shiv Basant.
“This was not done in municipal elections before. We have decided to introduce in municipal elections at all eight places where elections will be held. I think if voters’ slips are delivered and if they can be downloaded from the website then voting percentage will increase. Voting percentage has not been good so efforts are needed in the direction of creating awareness,” said Basant. The SEC also directed district authorities to upload voters slip on the website of district election officer (DEO) for the ease of a voter interested in downloading it from the DEO’s portal.
Notably, 229 wards in three municipal corporations, Dhanbad, Deoghar and Chas (newly formed), five municipal councils—Kodarma, Jhumri Tilaiya, Vishrampur, Manjhiaon, Chakradharpur-- besides Ranchi Municipal Corporation, Adityapur, Medininagar, Phusro and Mihijam are likely to go to polls in the last week of May. Voting will take place at 1377 polling stations in 229 municipal wards.
The SEC reviewed election preparedness such as delimitation, security, setting up of polling stations and implementation of model code of conduct in the UlBs slated to go to elections in the next month. Preliminary discussions were also conducted with DCs and SPs regarding Panchayat elections which is likely by the year end. The commission is likely to send a recommendation to Governor, Syed Ahmed in next few days.
“State Election Commission had a very good meeting with state authorities and everyone is on board. We hope that we will deliver very good municipal elections in May- very peaceful, fair and transparent elections,” asserted the State Election Commissioner. Meanwhile, the SEC toughened its stand against candidates of 2010 elections who failed to submit expenditure details while bestowed another opportunity to those who submitted details late or with minor faults.