THE JHARKHAND STORY NETWORK
Daltonganj, Nov 5: Palamu district election officer cum deputy commissioner Shashi Ranjan has directed the BLOs and their superiors to ensure 100 per cent distribution of the VIS (Voter’s Information Slip).
Role of VIS in clarifying voting locations
A VIS which helps a voter finds his booth with serial number of him in the electoral roll, is one of the mandatory documents that a voter has to produce to prove his being a bonafide voter. A VIS is useful and important. It should be in the hands of each of the voter.
There are 17,28,570 voters in Palamu district. The VIS is to be distributed to each of them.
How is VIS useful? This correspondent conducted a survey. The Palamu Club building and premise has two booths in Nawa Toli. Here a voter may get confused about where to go. The VIS comes to help the voter. It mentions his booth clearly.
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Challenges in VIS distribution and role of BLOs
The second part of the survey of this correspondent was how the VIS is distributed by the BLOs.
As a large number of the BLOs are women, the distribution of the VIS is mostly done by their husbands!
Sometimes the woman BLOs accompany their men, but mostly it’s their men who do it.
There are both advantages and disadvantages of it. Husbands of the BLOs distributed VIS till past 8 at night when a woman BLO can’t do it. The disadvantage is that an electoral paper so remains with a person unofficially.
Third thing that came out in the survey of this The Jharkhand Story is that VIS is to be given to the voter concerned and not to his neighbour or co-resident to pass it on.
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Here there are some practical difficulties. There is no guarantee as to when the BLO visits a voter’s house all the eligible voters are present there. Some may be out. Here a BLO does the most common thing. The BLO gives the bunch of the VISs to one of the family members. It’s not wrong as no BLO can afford to wait for the voter to receive his VIS by hand.
The Jharkhand Story correspondent visited a family having a grand total of 9 voters.
See, what this family told this correspondent. “Three of our 9 voters leave home as early as 7 in the morning only to join dinner by 8.30 pm. So where is the question of their meeting with the BLO.”
District Election Officer’s warning on maintaining accurate records
District election officer cum deputy commissioner Shashi Ranjan has asked the workforce to be most cautious about the VIS as it at once gives input on either voter absent or voter shifted or voter dead. These three accounts are not to be fudged.
But here track record of a good number of the BLOs is dubious. The account of the absent, shifted and dead voters is not properly and judiciously maintained. Here the district election officer Shashi Ranjan has warned against any lackadaisical attitude.
