Visually impaired voters a neglected lot
By Our Reporter
SHILLONG: Despite the availability of Braille compatible EVMs in all polling stations of the State, the visually impaired voters are yet to get any training on using the Braille method to cast their votes.
An election official said on Tuesday that all the 3,700 EVMs to be used for the February 23 polls will be Braille compatible to facilitate the blind voters to cast their votes.
However, the ground reality is that no training is being imparted to the blind voters in this regard.
One such ‘affected voter’ is the Headmistress of Jyoti Sroat School for the visually impaired, Bertha Dkhar. She had to return without having the feel of the machine as there was no one to demonstrate the EVM at the office of the East Khasi Hills Deputy Commissioner, who is also the district electoral officer.
Citing her experience in the past, Dkhar said that the booth level officers would insist on having an assistant to enter the booth along with her to cast vote on her behalf to prevent making any mistake.
“I agreed to their (booth level officers) suggestion as it is not easy to cast your votes when you cannot see what is lying in front of you and since there was a long queue, I didn’t want to waste much time in feeling the machine”, she said.
The election department is yet to release the statistics related to the differently abled voters including those who are visually impaired.
A source from the Bethany Society, an NGO dealing with the issues related to the differently abled said that as per the 2001 census, the number of visually impaired persons is second highest in the State among other differently abled persons. East Garo Hills and West Khasi Hills have the maximum number of visually impaired people.
“According to the census, it was stated that there are around 30,000 differently abled persons in the State out of which around 5000-6000 are visually impaired citizens and 10 percent of them are children”, he said.
However, the source mentioned that based on ground reality, the census presented is wrong as the number of the differently abled persons in the State is higher than the number highlighted in the census.
An official with the election department said that the number of visually impaired voters is yet to be ascertained.
The Chief Electoral Officer, P Naik said that since all the polling stations will have the provision for ramps, other differently abled voters will not have any difficulty in registering their votes.