Civic Body Polls to Be Held with Ballot Papers: Chhattisgarh Dep CM Arun Sao

Raipur: Chhattisgarh deputy chief minister Arun Sao on Friday announced that the upcoming civic body polls in the state would be held with ballot papers.

Mr Sao who holds the panchayati raj portfolio said that the upcoming polls to the rural as well as the urban local bodies would be conducted with ballot papers, not with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

During the previous Raman Singh government, polls to the civic bodies in the state were used to be conducted with the EVMs.

However, the practice of holding rural and urban local body polls with EVMs was discontinued when the Congress came to power in the state in the 2018 Assembly elections.

The Vishnu Deo Sai government has decided to continue with the current practice of holding the rural and urban local body polls with the ballot papers.

“Polls to rural local bodies used to be held earlier with ballot papers due to some practical issues. Elections are held for multiple posts in the rural bodies simultaneously and hence, it is not feasible to hold rural local body polls with EVMs.

But the polls to the urban local bodies used to be held with EVMs during the previous Raman Singh government. Polls to the urban local bodies this time however cannot not be held with EVMs for some technical reasons particularly unavailability of EVMs within a short time”, senior BJP leader Anurag Agrawal told this newspaper.

The chairman and mayor posts in municipality and corporation bodies respectively would be held directly this time.

The process of reservation of posts of chairman and mayor in the municipal and corporation bodies for other backward caste (OBC), scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) and women would begin on January seven.

After the process is completed, notification for the polls to rural and urban local bodies would be announced, official sources said.