Kerala Assembly Elections: Special police officers don't get to vote

Thiruvananthapuram: It is an irony that the officials who aid the voting process don’t get to vote. In Thiruvananthapuram, none of the special police officers employed for the Assembly elections had postal votes.   To prevent  malpractices, they were posted at booths outside their constituencies. Only if  their senior officials allowed, they could go out and vote.

That was a problem only for those who were posted at a booth far away from their constituency.  One such case was that of A.J. Abhijith   “Travelling till Neyyattinkara will take time. It might get too late.,” he said.

There were 328 special police officials employed in  Thiruvananthapuram, according to city police commissioner Sparjan Kumar: “Special police officers are mostly college students and retired military personnel, none of whom are eligible to use the facility of postal votes. They have been told to inform their seniors and go to their respective booths to vote. This would work in many cases as the city constituencies like Nemom, Vattiyoorkavu and Thiruvananthapuram are close by.”

The SPOs were given handsome remuneration – Rs 1000 a day  for two days. However, it is a different story for block-level officers who get just Rs 600 a month. S. Prabhakumari, who was posted in Thiruvananthapuram constituency, had to vote in Vattiyoorkavu.

Normaly, BLOs are posted at the booths where they have vote, but Prabhakumari said that  as most were  not ready for the strenuous job,  BLOs were posted in far-off booths. “Many may not take the pains. If we too had postal votes, this could have been avoided,” she said.