Herald had first reported on this in the issue dated February 18 that a few hundred policemen might miss casting their postal votes for the Assembly elections as no arrangement had been made to ensure that IRB personnel travelling to Uttar Pradesh for election duty had cast their votes before they departed from Goa. The IRB personnel who were on duty from February 13, were relieved on the morning of February 15 and boarded a special train for Uttar Pradesh hours later, giving them little time to send their postal ballots.
The deployment of forces to Uttar Pradesh is routine election duty in poll-bound States and this batch of IRB personnel would be relieved only after the last phase of elections on March 7. With the last date for receipt of postal ballots being March 9 and travel time back to Goa not permitting them to vote, those who had not voted before their departure would have to forego the election, despite having applied for postal ballots. Under the existing procedure, whoever wishes to vote by postal ballot has to apply in advance and the ballot has to reach the election office by March 9.
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It is not that the IRB personnel did not apply, they did and the postal ballots were either at their residences or at police stations, and with them being in Uttar Pradesh there was no way they could vote, unless they returned early enough to ensure that the postal ballot reached the election office by March 9. Just when it appeared that the IRB personnel in Uttar Pradesh would be unable to vote, the authorities in Goa got into the act and decided to replace around 500 of their personnel on duty in Uttar Pradesh (UP) with a fresh batch, which, instead of bringing any relief, led to another controversy.
With the Indian Railways turning down a request for a special train to ferry the IRB personnel to Uttar Pradesh, buses were requisitioned from the Kadamba Transport Corporation to take the fresh batch of policemen to Uttar Pradesh and bring back those on duty there so that they can vote. That, however, has evoked mixed response as the 1,800 km journey by road for the batch that is going and the immediate reporting to poll duty has enthused neither those who are on the way to Uttar Pradesh, nor those who are there and will return in the same buses.
The difficulty is in arriving at where did the planning go wrong? Those opting for postal ballots are provided enough time to vote – more than three weeks after the polling date by when to send in their ballots. In the current instance there obviously was some lacunae in the planning, and the IRB personnel cannot be entirely blameless in not voting on time, as some of them did manage to vote. But if there were those whose deployment time and location did not allow them to vote, then those managing this should have taken this into consideration and given them a day to fill in their postal ballots and send them in.
This should serve as a learning experience to ensure that in future arrangements are made not just for government employees on election duty to vote by postal ballot, but that also those who may be on such duty outside the State get the same opportunity. Any repeat of such an episode will only prove that the entire ordeal for the IRB personnel was entirely in vain.
