Telangana: Polling personnel don’t vote? Only 5% exercised franchise in assembly polls

HYDERABAD: Even as the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is carrying out a major campaign to to improve voter turnout in the elections, state employees who were drafted for election duty themselves did not show any interest to cast their vote through postal ballot. In the recently held assembly elections, only 5% of the total eligible postal ballot voters exercised their franchise.
In all, only 1,100 polling personnel of the 20,000 who were drafted for election duty for the 2018 assembly elections cast their vote.And the apathy towards voting in elections seems to be continuing for the Lok Sabha polls as well. According to the GHMC election wing, of the 20,000 employees belonging to 220 government departments including police personnel, only 3,000 have registered till Saturday for postal ballot and a few more applications were received on Monday.
Since employees who are on poll duties cannot exercise their franchise, the government gives them the choice to cast their vote through postal ballot. For opting for polstal ballot, the employee has to apply in Form 12 by giving details like the assembly constituency where his or her vote is, serial number and EPIC number along with Form 12 (a) where the employee has to mention details of their election duty order.
All employees enlisted for poll duty were supposed to submit their applications for postal ballot at the time of the first election training camp on March 19, but only 1,500 applications were received till date. “The corporation has sent them messages and reminders later to submit their applications. We have provided boxes at the GHMC head offices or to submit their applications to nodal officers of their respective departments. But many of them are yet to submit their applications,” District Election Officer and GHMC commissioner M Dana Kishore told TOI on Monday.
Meanwhile, the GHMC has decided to rope in all the 3,500 Residential Welfare Associations (RWA) in creating awareness on voting and mock polling in their respective localities by taking up programme like ‘Check If You Can Vote’. “An app to give details of the voters, polling stations and directions to polling stations will be provided. It will be released in the first week of April,” Dana Kishore said.
The district election officer said during assembly elections voter awareness programmes were conducted in three locations in each of 85 wards. Now, voter awareness on using EVMs and VVPATs will be taken up in all the 1800 locations in 3976 polling booths, he said.