The district administration has begun an initiative to display details of Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in all the branches of public and private sector banks, ATMs, Primary Agricultural Co-operative Societies (PACS), and post offices by putting up posters in the vernacular language.
Acting upon the instructions of Election Commission of India to create awareness of voting among people through its ‘Know your BLO’ campaign, the posters will display the BLOs name and their contact numbers.
The Commission had also given directions to display the posters in all 1.60 lakh post offices across the country.
Official sources told The Hindu here on Thursday that a format had been approved with orders given for printing 8,000 copies.
The branches would begin displaying them by next week. The poster would inform people that they could contact the BLO for all election-related information.
The BLO would provide information for all elections, including Parliamentary, Assembly, and local bodies. For a voter in a particular village, the branch concerned would have a poster informing the person of his or her booth, the BLO, and the contact number. They would be put up in all the 349 branches of public and private sector banks, 181 PACS, around 400 ATMs, and the Postal Department’s 93 sub-offices and 243 Extra Departmental Branch Offices. The expense of the posters was being shared by the major banks.
Collector Anshul Mishra, who is also the District Electoral Officer, has directed the banks and Tahsildhar (Election) to submit compliance reports on this issue. District Revenue Officer Ravindran also convened a meeting recently to discuss the issue and the banks were advised to send a list of ATM locations to the Lead Bank office.
The Village Administrative Officers would be handing over the posters to the bank branch managers concerned.
The BLOs, drawn from State government or local bodies, would scrutinise the voters’ list of each polling station in their jurisdiction.
