With more than a thousand calls alone in Ranchi Assembly constituency, the concept of door-to-door service for the electorates introduced by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer has got a thumbs up from the electorates. The office of the District Electoral Officer of Ranchi has appointed as many 11 facilitators for Khijri, Ranchi, Hatia, and Kanke Assembly constituencies.
The system, introduced some two months back, has relieved electorates of the inconvenience of travelling to nearest polling booth besides other problems faced by them at the polling booth. "This is a very good initiative as the electorate doesn't need to travel to polling station. Moreover, this door step service ensures a proper guidance to an electorate while filling a form for voter-ID card or correction of names," said Ashok Kumar Singh, a resident of Namkum.
According to inputs received from the facilitators, as many as three facilitators active in Ranchi assembly constituency have submitted around 1000 applications and distributed around 350 cards while the rest applications are under process. The remaining 650 applicants are likely to be distributed PVC coated voter-ID cards. The number of applicants in four assembly constituencies is around 2000. "We were told by officials of data centre that voter-ID card for pending applications will be issued in the changed form," said Rajkumar Gupta, a facilitator in Ranchi constituency. Notwithstanding the overwhelming response from the electorates of all the Assembly constituencies in Ranchi district, the facilitators appointed feel that the charges fixed for rendering their service have made the proposition a bit costly for them under certain circumstances.
As per the innovative step taken by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, the facilitators have been authorized to provide door step service upon request by an electorate regarding voter-ID card. The charges for rendering their service has been fixed at Rs 50 which the facilitators feel should be revised. "Sometimes we travel to long distances to answer just one call. Answering calls like these is a bit costly," said Jugnu Baraik, a facilitator for Khijri Assembly constituency.
Interestingly, besides asking for revising the charges for rendering door step service, the facilitators also expect the district administration to provide publicity support for them in their respective areas. The district administration, however, assuring to forward their request to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer expressed inability in extending support on publicity material.
"The Government is not getting anything out of this arrangement hence we cannot extend our support in their area. However, we have displayed their (facilitators') number at our offices, prgya Kendra besides providing contact numbers to political parties and ward members," said SDO Sadar Ameet Kumar adding "if they demand an increase in fee they charge then we will forward their request to the office of CEO after the summary revision of January 6." Meanwhile, the district administration has given indication of increasing the number of facilitators after assessing the response level. The administration is likely to take a decision on this after January 6.