If the COVID-19 pandemic persists, the 2021 Assembly polls in the State will see the introduction of postal ballots for voters above 80 years of age and differently-abled, in addition to electors who test positive for COVID-19 or are in quarantine, Teeka Ram Meena, Chief Electoral Officer (Kerala), has said.
“'District Election Officers have been directed to identify voters who are 80-plus or people with disabilities (PwD) while updating the electoral rolls and make a separate list. Postal ballots will be optional for them. Once they are flagged, we will send them a form seeking their preference as to whether they would rather visit the polling booths to vote or use postal ballots,” Mr. Meena told The Hindu.
However, the postal ballots for these voters will not be hand-delivered by teams led by Special Polling Officers (SPO) as done by the State Election Commission for the just-concluded local body elections. “We will adopt the same methodology that is used for despatching postal ballots to the service voters. We will send the ballots by post and voters can return them by post to the returning officers,” he said.
Electors who test positive for COVID-19 or are in quarantine will be allowed to cast their votes directly at the polling stations in the final hour of polling. Additionally, every polling station will have a health nodal officer to make sure that the COVID-19 guidelines are complied with.
The State may require at least 15,000 auxiliary polling booths for the 2021 Assembly elections if the COVID-19 situation persists and the voter population per booth has to be restricted to 1,000.
“Creating auxiliary polling stations will be a major challenge as Election Commission of India (ECI) directives require us to locate the auxiliary stations in the same building as the main station as far as possible,” he said. Consequently, this also calls for additional manpower. The ECI had deployed 2.3 lakh personnel (excluding police personnel) for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Kerala. This could go up to 2.4 lakh.
Mr. Meena urged the public to use the campaign underway in the State to update the voter rolls to include their names or make corrections/deletions. The ECI had last updated the rolls in 2019.
