Over 29K volunteers to help disabled vote

Hyderabad: A total 29,541 volunteers drawn from National Cadet Corps (NCC), National Social Service (NSC) and Nehru Yuvak Kendras (NYK) will be positioned at the polling stations on the polling day as part of a “strategic framework” action programme to assist the listed (mapped) persons with disabilities (PwDs) to vote. This is being done in line with the Election Commission’s motto “No Voter to be Left Behind” and its observance of 2018 as year of “Accessible Elections.”

The Chief Electoral Officer, Dr Rajat Kumar, said here on Saturday, stipulating positioning of these volunteers in the ratio of one volunteer for one to two polling stations at a location (building), two volunteers for three to four polling stations in a location, three volunteers for 5 to 10 polling stations at a location and four volunteers for more number of polling stations at a location. The CEO said that the 32,796 polling stations in the State, where the polling will be conducted, will be located at 24,034 polling locations. One or two polling stations will be located in one building and for this category of polling stations, 25,445 volunteers will be positioned.

At some places, there will be buildings each accommodating three to four polling stations, totalling 1,555 and for them 3,110 volunteers are drafted. In the third category of the buildings, five to 10 polling stations will be located each, totalling of 322 polling stations. They will be provided 966 volunteers. The fourth category of buildings will have each 5 polling stations, with each requiring 4 volunteers, totalling 20 volunteers.

The CEO also stipulated that NSS university coordinators and programme officers of the all the districts should converge at the places of the concerned district collectors/DEOs and make the necessary arrangements to position the volunteers. He said that the volunteers were drawn from NCC, NSS and NYK and other non-partisan voluntary groups and trained at one-day master level orientation programme at English Foreign Languages University at Tarnaka, on November 29.