Team News Riveting
Raipur, August 26
Poll-bound Chhattisgarh has added over 4 lakh new voters in its roll.
The poll panel headed by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar landed here on Thursday on a three-day visit to review the election preparedness in Chhattisgarh that goes to the polls probably in November. The team on Friday chaired the meeting of officials including from the districts and took stock of the arrangement made for the election. Election Commissioners Anup Chandra Pandey and Arun Goel, other ECI members and Chhattisgarh’s Chief Electoral Officer Reena Babasaheb Kangale were present in the meeting.
On Saturday, Kumar addressed a press conference and said Chhattisgarh had 1.97 crore voters, including 98.5 lakh women outnumbering the 98.2 lakh men voters, and 762 transgenders. Of the total voters, 4.43 lakh are first timers, 2,948 are centenarians, 1.47 lakh are persons with disabilities (PwD), 2.02 lakh voters are in the 80-plus age segment and 19,854 are service votes, he said.
He said persons above 80 years of age and those with more than 40 percent disability will be able to cast their votes from home through postal ballots in the upcoming Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh. There are more than 2 lakh voters above the age of 80 in the state, he said.
“Voters above the age of 80 years will have the facility to cast their votes from home and the same facility will be available to the persons with disabilities (more than 40 per cent). For this, they have to fill form 12D within five days of notification of the election,” Kumar said. These voters will also have a pick drop facility to the polling stations, he said.
“An intensive drive will be carried out to enroll the left-over electors belonging from five PVTGs- Abhujmaria, Kamar, Pahadi Korwa, Birhor and Baiga,” Kumar said, adding that the PVTGs have a population of 1.86 lakh and of them 1.15 lakh are over 18 years of age but only 1.13 lakh have been enrolled as voters.
The total number of polling booths in the state is 24,109, of which 900 ‘sangwari’ ones will be managed by women staff and security personnel, and 90 booths will be managed by PwDs, he said. All polling booths will have facilities like toilets, wheelchairs, etc, he added. Under the ‘nav vadhu samman samaroh,’ 61,683 new brides have been enrolled as electors by filling out form-8 for shifted voters, the CEC said.
The CEC made it clear that no contract and irregular employees working in the Chhattisgarh government departments would not be deployed in the election duty.
