EC's Bengal drive to enlist more specially-abled voters

Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Election Commission (EC) will take up a drive to include specially-abled people into the voters’ list in West Bengal as part of its accessible election initiative.

They will tally the number of specially-abled voters with the list of beneficiaries of welfare schemes for such persons.

Speaking to DH, a senior EC official said that the initiative will comprise of block-level screening of specially-abled voters in all the districts of the state.

The EC will launch a special two-day-long drive in this regard, starting from February 23.

“We are going to asses the left out Persons with Disabilities (PWD) who are yet to be enrolled into the electoral rolls. There will be a multi-level screening in every district at the block-level of PWDs enrolled into the voters’ list and PWDs enrolled into social welfare schemes meant for them,” the official said.

He also said that the data will be used to formulate future strategies to include PWDs into the voters’ list.

The drive will also include PWDs who are included into the voters’ list but are not marked as PWDs.

“Once the related data is updated it will be easier for us to further increase the participation of PWDs into the electoral process,” the official said.

The screening process will include another level, where PWDs who are enrolled as beneficiaries into the related social welfare schemes but are not enrolled into the voters’ list.

“One of the key focus of the drive will be include them into the voters’ list,” the official said and added that the PWDs who are eligible to be voters but are yet to be enrolled into the voters’ list will be included in the list under the initiative.

Various other initiatives will also be taken by the EC to make elections more accessible to specially-abled people.

Sources in EC revealed that for the first time in West Bengal accessibility observers will be deployed during the upcoming Lok Sabha elections to observe and evaluate the facilities provided for PWD voters at polling booths.

Currently, there are about 1.60-lakh PWD voters in Bengal and out of the about 77,000 polling booths there are ramps for PWD voters in about 77.60 %, the sources said.