SHILLONG: In another unique initiative, Election Friends or Matdata Mitra will be deployed for the first time in Meghalaya as poll volunteers. About 1,000 election friends will be drawn from leading youth organisations like Meghalaya scouts and guides, NSS and Nehru Yuva Kendra.
The chief electoral officer told The Shillong Times that the volunteers will be actively deployed in various polling stations to facilitate voters in general but with a special focus on persons with disabilities, aged and infirm and young mothers with children, keeping up with the ECI ethos of ‘No Voter to be left Behind’.
The volunteers will also gain an invaluable opportunity to get a firsthand experience of democracy and electoral process at the polling station, which is the cornerstone of the electoral exercise, Kharkongor said.
Meghalaya has 3,167 polling stations – 2,053 in Shillong parliamentary constituency and 1,114 in Tura.
“It is expected that in at least all the model polling stations, all women polling stations and in polling stations with a large number of People with Disabilities (PwDs), poll volunteers will be actively deployed,” the chief electoral officer said.
Training for the 1,000-odd nodal officers drawn from all the leading youth organisations will be held next week in four batches.
They in turn will train and sensitise poll volunteers, who would be deployed on poll day.
Poll volunteers have to complete at least Class X and about to be first-time voters, the official said. They will help voters with location logistics and in improvising the voting process.
They will help to shuttle voters to and from the poll booths, besides taking part in SVEEP campaign and mobilising community for a conclusive polling environment.
The volunteers will also be actively involved in the upcoming Shillong Talks, a voter engagement programme scheduled on the eve of the parliamentary polls.
