Haryana chief electoral officer (CEO) Anurag Agarwal on Tuesday said that for the convenience of visually impaired voters in the state, Electors Photo Identity Cards (Epic), and photo voter slips have been printed in Braille script.
Apart from this, many types of facilities are being provided to differently-abled voters, including the provision of wheelchairs, ramps at polling stations and transport facilities.
Sharing more details about the same, the Chief Electoral Officer said that the number of identified Persons with Disabilities (PwD) voters in Lok Sabha Election-2019 was 1,0,4000.
He said but because of the tremendous efforts being done in the Systematic Voter Education and Electoral Participation Program (SVEEP) program across the state, the number of PwD voters has now increased to 1,38,196 in the General Assembly Elections-2019 on 21 October.
Agarwal further informed that as on October 4, 2019, there are 11,660 visually impaired voters, 8428 speech and hearing impaired voters, 79537 PwD voters and 38,571 other Divyang voters in the state.
He informed that vehicle facilities will be provided to bring all the PwD voters to the polling booth and pick and drop and wheelchairs will also be provided to the voters who are unable to walk. Ramps will also be arranged at each polling station.
In addition, NCC, NSS and Red Cross volunteers will also be arranged to help them, the CEO said.
He said that the PwD voters, who want transport facility and wheelchair facility to go to the polling station and to return home will have to inform the district administration four to five days in advance. In addition, PWDs can also demand these facilities through the mobile app, which is specially designed for them.
Agarwal said that visually impaired voters and disabled voters, who are unable to vote by pressing the machine button, can take a colleague along with them to cast their votes but the assistant must be 18 years or older.
He informed that the PwD voters who are able to cast their vote by pressing the machine button themselves, can take their associate Divyang voter along with those voters to the voting room, but the assistant cannot go inside the voting room.