Prior to the elections in Haryana, a minimum of 12,000 voters, either aged 85 and above or with disabilities, chose to utilize the home voting option, which was finalized on Monday in the state.
Home voting is an option available to elderly voters aged 85 and above, as well as individuals with disabilities meeting the 40% benchmark. Every qualified individual can utilize the option of home voting with a postal ballot in said elections.
The state has 149,000 voters with disabilities and 246,000 voters over 85 years old.
People who are over 85 years old and individuals with disabilities have sent in their applications to the appropriate Returning Officer. “As per Haryana chief electoral officer Pankaj Agarwal, 9,596 voters aged over 85 years and 2,600 PwD voters will be granted home voting facilities upon approval by the Returning Officers.” According to the statement, the process was finished on Monday.
Using the home voting facility is not mandatory. A team of pollsters consisting of two officials, a videographer, and security will visit the home of an elector who requested home voting. They will provide a voting booth for the elector to cast their postal ballot while ensuring the vote remains confidential.
In order to be transparent, the list of voters who choose home voting is given to candidates from recognized political parties. They are also given the voting schedule and the route chart of polling parties so they can send representatives to observe the process.
Following the voting process, the ballots are placed in a secure location with the Returning Officer (RO). The votes are tallied together with other votes.
Haryana will hold elections on Saturday, October 5. A total of 20,632 polling stations will be in operation for the upcoming assembly elections, with 27,866 EVMs being utilized.
Additionally, a total of 24,719 control units and 26,774 VVPAT machines will be utilized throughout the course of the election. Voters have the option to confirm their vote on the VVPAT machine. 225 companies of Central Armed Police Forces have already been stationed for election security purposes. In addition to this, there are 500 flying squad teams and 461 state surveillance teams currently active.
A total of 1,031 candidates are competing in the state’s election for the 90 assembly seats. The elections in the state will take place in one phase for all seats. The vote tallying will occur on October 8 simultaneously with Jammu and Kashmir, where two out of three voting phases have been finished. The final phase will take place on Tuesday.
The tenure of the Haryana assembly was scheduled to conclude on November 3. The state has a total of 2.01 crore voters, with 1.06 crore being males and 0.95 crore being females.