Palamu administration on Thursday arranged a more than one hour session for media persons of Daltonganj with regard to a few stock in trade complaints of voting but votes going other way leading to a sense of anger, agony and frustration which a voter develops after coming out of the booth cursing one and all.

The session discussed this at length. The issue was that one in a hundred voters comes complaining that he cast his vote for ‘X’ candidate but it did not go to X  account. The voter feels cheated.

He begins to talk bad things about control unit, ballot unit and VVPAT and if not contented even with this he raises accusing fingers at the presiding officer and his team of polling officials and then finally the district election officer for the mess he faced.

The master trainer Parshuram Tiwary a Government school teacher who held this session with the media persons here said, “The polling team is bound to acknowledge this complaint in all seriousness. 

The complaining voter is not to be shooed away.  He is to be heard and assured to retain his confidence and trust in voting.” Tiwary said Election Commission of India has given the opportunity of Test Vote.

A complaining voter is free to avail of this Test Vote and the polling team is to provide this opportunity with no grudge or grin on face. But here Tiwary dropping a word of caution to such complaining voter said, “The complaint of vote cast going other way must be very genuine.

The complaint should not be any fictitious or manufactured at all as otherwise in Test Vote the verity of the first vote cast will appear and if complaint found bogus then in that event the complaining voter is to face legal music which is 6 months imprisonment, 1,000 rupees penalty or both of these together.”

To a query of a scribe that EVMs go non functional right at the start of voting and voting gets delayed by 2 hours or more then in that condition what measures are available for the voters of that particular booth where the EVM has so gone non functional to which Tiwary said, “Non functional EVMs or VVPAT are to be replaced and time consumed in it is to be replenished.”

Reminded that EVMs are put to mock polling at the very start and minimum of 50 mock votes for a panel of 16 candidates are required then in case of replacement of EVMs etc such 50 mock votes is again essential to which Tiwary said, “ No.  The number of mock votes has been drastically scaled down say 16 or 17 only and this is to save time for the replaced EVMs to start poll business.”

DC Palamu Shantanu Kumar Agrahari in his brief interaction with media persons said this is no training but in fact awareness for scribes as they will find it more convenient to tell the masses about the functioning of the EVMs.

Agrahari said ECI is reported to have felt sad when media persons highlighted the non functional EVMs of only 4 booths across the country in this LS election while more than one lakh booths functioned too good and well.