The State election authority, the Chief Electoral Officer, has focussed attention on the distribution of voter slips to all eligible voters from November 23 after the completion of enumeration of voters through second supplement released on Monday night.
Accordingly, the booth-level officers will visit all the households along with necessary registers to distribute voter slips exercising due precautions like entering the details of the slips distributed in each house. Steps have been taken to ensure that slips are not distributed in bulk and stringent action would be initiated against officials who are found violating the guidelines.
Criminal proceedings
“Violating the guidelines will attract provisions under the Representation of Peoples Act as also criminal laws and proceedings will be initiated accordingly,” CEO Rajat Kumar said. Pending voter slips, if any, would be returned to the election authority in sealed covers and they would be kept in the facilitation centres in the vicinity of the polling stations on the poll day, December 7.
Eligible voters who could not take take their voter slips could approach the facilitation centre and collect their slips showing identity proofs. The election authority would commence printing of the ballot papers along with the photographs of the contesting candidates from November 23, a day after the deadline for withdrawal of nominations expires.
Scrutiny of nominations
Responding to queries on the scrutiny of nominations, he said the process was expected to be completed late on Tuesday night and spill over nominations if any would be taken up on Wednesday. The process was time consuming as the election officials were faced with multiple nominations filed by the candidates while there were cases where the same candidate filed nominations from more than one constituencies.
To a query relating to the delay in the distribution of electors photo identity cards, he said more than 5 lakh EPIC cards were made available with the returning officers concerned and their distribution was likely to be completed much ahead of the polling day. Those who could not obtain their EPIC cards could approach the Mee Seva Centres for getting them on payment of nominal amount. The election authority would also direct the Mee Seva authorities to ensure that all requests for the EPIC cards were attended to promptly.
‘No biased approach’
Asked about the complaints on officials drafted for polling duties adopting a biased approach towards the TRS candidates, he said there was little scope for such incidents to happen as the election authority had deployed the poll personnel on the basis of randomisation.
