Ahead of polling in Haryana, at least 12,000 voters who were either above the age of 85 years or were disabled opted for the home voting facility that was completed on Monday in the state.
The facility of home voting is given to voters who are senior citizens above 85 years of age and persons with disabilities (PwDs) with 40% benchmark disability. Any eligible citizen can avail of the provision of home voting through postal ballot in these elections.
The state has 1.49 lakh PwD voters and 2.46 lakh voters above the age of 85 years.
“Voters aged above 85 years and Persons with Disabilities (PwD) had submitted applications to the concerned Returning Officer. Upon approval by the Returning Officers, home voting facilities are being provided to 9,596 voters over the age of 85 years and 2,600 PwD voters,” a statement from Haryana chief electoral officer Pankaj Agarwal reads. The process, as per the statement, was completed on Monday.
The home voting facility is optional. A polling team including two polling officials along with a videographer and security will go to the elector’s house who demanded home voting with a voting compartment and get the elector to vote on the postal ballot maintaining complete secrecy of the vote.
To ensure transparency, the list of all these voters opting for home voting is shared with the contesting candidates of recognised political parties and they were also provided with the schedule of voting and the route chart of the polling parties so that they can send their representatives to witness the polling procedure.
After the voting, the ballots are stored securely with the RO. Counting of these votes is done with other votes.
Haryana is going for polls on Saturday, October 5. At least 20,632 polling stations have been set up for the assembly elections in which 27,866 EVMs will be used.
“… including the reserved units, a total of 27,866 Electronic Voting Machines (ballot units) will be used in these elections. Along with this, 24,719 control units and 26,774 VVPAT machines will be used during the election process. Voters can verify their vote on the VVPAT machine after casting it,” the CEO said.
For security, 225 companies of Central Armed Police Forces have already been deployed for the elections. Apart from this, 500 flying squad teams and 461 state surveillance teams are also on duty.
At least 1,031 candidates are contesting the elections for the 90 assembly seats in the state. The polls in the state will be held in a single phase across all the seats. The counting of votes will take place on October 8 along with Jammu and Kashmir where two of the three phases of polling have been completed so far. The third and the last phase will be held on Tuesday.
The term of the Haryana assembly was to end on November 3. The state has 2.01 crore voters, including 1.06 crore males and 0.95 crore females.
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