From Our Correspondent
JOWAI: In a startling revelation, many Government servants from West Jaintia Hills District were denied their fundamental right to vote in the February 23 election in the State despite having applied for postal ballot papers through the prescribed Form 12, since West Jaintia Hills Deputy Commissioner, Peter S Dkhar, who is also the District Election Officer, failed to process the forms
Reliable sources from the district informed that the Deputy Commissioner had received several correspondences from his counterparts in other districts in connection with Form 12, an application for postal ballots papers, but failed to get any reply from Dkhar.
Sources also informed that when the affected government servants lodged a complaint, the Deputy Commissioner tried to defend himself by explaining that he had received their application very late.
“We had submitted our application in time and we don’t understand why we were not allotted the postal ballot papers to allow us to exercise our franchise,” one of the government servants, who did not want to be named, told this scribe.
“When we met him (Dkhar), he told us that he had received the applications (Form 12) only on February 25,” another government employee stated.
However, this scribe has obtained some evidences from officials of the Jowai Post Office which reveal that Dkhar had received the application forms through speed posts on February 11, which had been dispatched from Nongstoin, Shillong and three other Deputy Commissioners’ Office.
Attempts to contact the Deputy Commissioner for his reaction met with failure as he neither returned the calls nor replied to the SMS sent on his cell phone.
Incidentally, unconfirmed reports from East Khasi Hills and West Khasi Hills districts stated that many government servants who were posted in Ri-Bhoi for election related duties also could not cast their votes through the postal ballot system owing to various reasons.
