Mumbai: The Cuffe Parade Residents Association has announced to organise transport facility for senior citizens and specially-abled voters through electric buggy cars to increase voter turnout in the upcoming Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha elections. The decision was made at the voter awareness campaign organised by the residents association in association with The Free Press Journal.
Colaba constituency has historically had a low voter turnout in Mumbai and in 2019, it had the lowest voter turnout as just 40% of the total voters casted their votes. On Tuesday, CPRA and Free Press Journal collaborated to bring a change in the voter turnout trend of the constituency where Dr. Kiran Kulkarni, additional chief election officer of Maharashtra, interacted with the residents.
Cuffe Parade Residents Association launches electric buggy service to assist senior citizens and specially-abled voters on election day | File Photo
Amid the interaction, as citizens complained of parking spots being far from the polling station, Dr. Kulkarni suggested CPRA come up with innovative solutions to help needy people reach the polling stations. The citizens came up with an idea of setting up transport service through electric buggy cars which would ferry people to and fro the polling stations and one of the residents immediately announced to sponsor one of the buggies.
Dr. Kulkarni, who has organised over 100 citizen outreach program across the state in last eight months, expressed dissatisfaction for Colaba’s low voter turnout as he said that tribal and Naxal areas like Gadchiroli and Nandurbar have been recording higher voter turnout than Colaba, which has a special place in state’s history, geography and culture.
Cuffe Parade Residents Association launches electric buggy service to assist senior citizens and specially-abled voters on election day | File Photo
Dr. Kulkarni educated the residents about various initiatives undertaken by the Election Commission to facilitate comfortable voting for the citizens which include placing all polling stations on ground floor, creating special polling stations in high-rise buildings, home voting facility for senior citizens aged 85 and above and specially abled.
He said that only 3% of voters have registered their mobile number with the election commission portal to receive all the updates over text messages. “This facility allows the voters to attach their mobile number with their name in the voters’ list. After that all the developments related to elections can be received on their mobile phones. Those who are left to add their number in the list can do it post assembly elections,” he added.
Cuffe Parade Residents Association launches electric buggy service to assist senior citizens and specially-abled voters on election day | File Photo
Many citizens complained about their names missing from the voters’ list, to which Dr. Kulkarni said that voters should always check their names well in advance before the elections through the mobile application to confirm if their name has been skipped or if their booth has been changed and that can be corrected in the summary survey revision, which happened in August for the upcoming elections.
He also solved citizens’ doubts about the EVMs and reassured them that EVMs are technologically the safest and most advance machinery to conduct elections. He said that there is no scope for administrative tampering with the EVMs as political representatives from all the parties are involved at all the stages of EVM functioning.
“The invention of EVM is a matter of pride for our country and I will equate it with the historic moment of the first Indian going into space. While other countries are still using electronic voting mechanism, our country is already comfortable with the electronic voting machines. Voters can check the EVM manual on the ECI and Maharashtra CEO websites, which has all the details about its functioning,” Dr. Kulkarni added.
Dr. Lara Dsouza, president of CPRA, said, “We are hopeful that today’s insightful and inspiring session will motivate more and more people from the locality to come out on November 20 and cast their votes. Apart from organising for electric buggies, CPRA will also see that people from the same societies carpool to the polling station and help the senior citizens. We will also mobilise the youth to help and motivate all the people.”
