Thursday, 24 February 2022 | PNS | Dehradun
The prospects of a close contest in the Uttarakhand Assembly elections for which the voting was held on February 14 has made the voting through the postal ballots all the more important. The opposition Congress has already raised the fear that the ruling BJP can use these votes in its favour. The Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Ganesh Godiyal led a delegation of the party to the Election Commission (EC) recently. Godiyal said that district administration is giving no information about the postal ballots issued to the Congress candidates and in such a scenario it is likely that they be misused by the BJP candidates in their favour. Former chief minister and head of campaign committee of Uttarakhand Congress Harish Rawat circulated a video in which a person purportedly in an army centre is seen ticking many postal ballots. The anxiety of the Congress is understandable since there are dozens of such constituencies where the contest between Congress and BJP candidates is said to be very close. In the last assembly elections as well when the state was under a strong Modi wave there were 24 such assembly segments where the margin of victory was less than 5000 votes. Past data suggest that the votes cast in the postal ballot are in support of the candidates of the ruling party in the centre.
The EC had so far received more than 45,000 postal ballots from the absentee voters in Uttarakhand. The commission had issued 58,048 postal ballots for the employees deployed in the election duty for the Uttarakhand assembly elections. Similarly it issued 94,471 postal ballots for the service voters (The armed forces personnel of the state). The EC has so far received 31,576 postal ballots of the employees deployed in election duty while about 14,000 postal ballots of service voters have been received by the EC.
