Dear enlightened citizens, In 2004 the Supreme Court of India ordered the Election Commission to provide facilities to aid electors with disability to ensure their voting rights are protected and observed. The court mandated the following provisions: 1. Facility of Ramp/wooden ramp at each polling booth 2. Separate queue for persons with disabilities 3. The numbers of candidate in the electronic voting machine being written in Braille to enable visually impaired voters to feel the numbers and press an appropriate buttons to cast the vote. 4. Polling station personnel to be courteous ad render necessary assistance to enable PwD to exercise their franchise with least inconvenience. 5. Well in advance publicity in media to make PwD aware of the facilities before hand and thus, are encouraged to go and exercise their franchise We have observed that people with visual impairment have actively participated in the assembly election happened in five states in 2013. Talking over to some people who have experienced difficulty while casting their votes is enough to demonstrate that State Election Departments failed to adhere to the order. Prior to election 2013, we filed RTI application to election commission of India to know their readiness in terms of providing accessible polling. We can share the response later ,if one needs to know. Apart from that , we are planning to write a letter to the Election Commission of India to highlight the issue and remind them to adhere with the accessibility provisions. We would like get the wider responses from the people who have experience of voting in 2013. We request you to fill up an online survey which will be evaluated and presented in the letter to Chief Election Commission.This questionnaire is for those persons with visual impairment who have given their vote in the recent assembly elections happened in five states: Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Mizoram. I request you to give your precious time of 2-3 minutes to fill the survey form by 28th March 2014. Please click here to go ahead with online survey. https://surveymonkey/s/2CZFDZQ Best regards, Shabina Bano Research Officer Score Foundation
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 10:53:19 +0000