Kakinada: Confusion prevails as voters fail to get slips

Kakinada: With just hours left for voters to head to the polling stations to cast their votes, a sense of confusion still persists among many of the citizens as to where they should go to exercise their franchise.

Due to several factors, many of the people are still to get their voter slips that would specify the status of their vote and where it is to be cast. While the authorities have given clear instructions that the slips be delivered to voters well in advance, that has not been done.

According to sources, the Election Commission decided to distribute voter slips to voters according to their addresses through booth level officers (BLO) in order to reduce confusion among voters who need not go out looking for where their polling booth was.

District collector Karthikeya Misra has given clear instructions to the returning officers concerned to distribute the slips by Monday evening. Many of the voters still need to rush to the offices concerned to enquire about their vote.

In some cases, the name of the voter can be seen online though it is not mentioned on the list. Under these conditions, voters would not know which booth they should go to for exercising their franchise. During the municipal elections earlier, many such voters could not cast their vote though they had their electronic photo identity cards with them.

They asked the officials to provide voter slips by inspecting the BLO’s ledgers whether they distributed it or not as they can easily franchise their vote on polling day.

Meanwhile, Kakinada revenue divisional officer B. Rajakumari, clarifying on the issue, said that all the voter slips had been distributed by BLOs. Anybody who has not got the slips can go to their polling booths and collect the same from the BLO who is there until the completion of polling. She said if their votes are online and not in the voter list, their names can be found in auxiliary voter list which they can get.

Ms Rajakumari insisted that though the voter slips have their photo identity, a voter needs to bring their another ID to cast their vote. Voter slips alone will not be enough to allow voters exercise their vote.

Meanwhile, BJP leader Duvvuri Subrahmanyam sent a message for his vote to the officials, immediately the voter slips have been sent to him by the BLO. He thanked the officials for their prompt response.