The Kerala High Court has directed the Election Commission of India (EC) to ensure that personnel who are on duty for Thursday’s Assembly polls, receive their postal ballots on time.
This follows a plea by the Kerala NGO Union, seeking to make available postal ballots and to extend the deadline for casting postal votes, to enable the personnel to exercise their franchise. It submitted that many such officials had not received their postal ballots, despite timely submission of applications.
During the hearing on Wednesday, a Bench of Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas said that the respondents, who including the EC, agreed to ensure that the postal ballots are received by the ‘voters on election duty’, provided the list of such persons who have not received such ballots is communicated to the nodal officers at the Voter Facilitation Centres by Wednesday noon.
List handed over
The NGO Union later submitted that it had handed over a list of 21,156 officials who were unable to cast their postal ballots by 6 p.m. on Wednesday. To this, the ECI submitted that steps will be taken to hand over maximum number of postal ballots, and that complaints could be raised after polling day. The matter has been posted for hearing on Friday.
