Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Electronic system to depute staff for poll duty

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The State Election Commission will use an electronic system, ‘e-drop,' to deploy 2.25 lakh government employees for the local body elections in October.

The system, developed by K. Suresh, informatics officer of the National Informatics Centre, Thrissur, exclusively for civic elections, will introduce a uniform deployment procedure and help avoid complaints regarding posting of polling staff on political and other considerations. The software can be used to identify the staff in each polling booth.

Polling stations in urban areas where electronic voting machines will be used will have one presiding officer and three polling officers and rural stations, one presiding officer and six polling officers. To facilitate the introduction of the e-drop system, the commission had directed local self-government institutions to prepare a list of institutions under their purview.

The civic bodies drew up the list on the basis of the professional tax and institutions register. The District Collectors were directed to prepare a list of employees in each institution.

Beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) will enter the data in a format prescribed by the NIC for preparing a database of employees. On completing the list, the election deputy collectors will mark the employees on the basis of their grades so that gazetted officers will be posted as presiding officers and others as polling officers in different ranks depending on their salary and seniority in service.

Once the marking process is completed, the software will be used to post them at random on the basis of the guidelines drawn up by the commission.

In order to avoid complaints about posting and discourage requests seeking exemption from polling duty, the commission has laid down a set of guidelines for posting the staff.

Employees will not be posted in the civic body where they reside. The operating staff of the KSEB, Kerala Water Authority, KSRTC, Information and Public Relations Department and BSNL have been exempted from polling duty. Similarly, those suffering from chronic ailments, lactating mothers, the physically challenged, anganwadi workers, doctors and para-medical staff have been exempted from duty.

Preference has been given to the employees of State government, public sector undertakings, corporations and boards, universities as well as cooperative banks and societies in which the government holds 50 per cent share. Based on these norms, the software will post the employees at random.

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