Sunday, 14 November 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
EC decides to extend postal ballot facility to 80 plus and people with disabilities
With the election commission deciding to extend the voting from home facility to the senior citizens who are more than 80 years old and the physically challenged voters the number of the postal ballots would increase in the upcoming assembly polls. Since the increase is expected to be substantial the political parties would surely revisit their election strategies in such a scenario.
Traditionally the service voters and the government employees engaged in election duty use the postal ballot method to exercise their franchise. However the addition of physically challenged and 80 plus voters would result in a major increase in the number of postal voters in the upcoming polls. The integrated draft electoral roll released by the election commission recently mentioned that there are 93911 service voters in Uttarakhand out of which 91378 are male and 2533 female voters. Pauri district has maximum number of service voters (16,163) followed by Pithoragarh (14,545). Chamoli has 10,398, Dehradun 9,805, Almora 7,218, Udham Singh Nagar 5973 and Tehri 5787 service voters.
As per the electoral rolls there are 1,65,113 voters in the state who are above 80 years of age. Interestingly the number of women 80 plus voters (93,576) is more than their male counterparts (71,537). Dehradun with 29,619 elderly voters is at the top of the list followed by Haridwar (22,361) and Udham Singh Nagar ( 20,476) 80 plus voters. Similarly the data shows that there are 53,900 specially abled voters in the state out of which 34,832 are males and 19,067 are female voters. In a recent decision, the election commission has decided that the people with disabilities and 80 plus voters can apply for the provision of voting at home and after due consideration it would be provided to them. Considering the scenario where all the disabled and 80 voters are given permission to vote from home the state would have 3,12,991 voters using postal ballots in the upcoming assembly elections.
