A SMOOTH and efficient polling process is the right of every citizen who goes to the polling station to cast his vote. Recently, in the first phase of the local bodies elections, once again the poor voters were at the mercy of the incompetent polling staff.
Many voters could not cast their votes, some were turned away when their names could not be verified in the voters list, while many voters were exhausted while waiting for their turn.
At polling stations no proper arrangements were made by the polling staff to facilitate voters or guide them to the designated place. At some of the polling stations, insufficient polling staff was unable to start polling on time. Voters had to suffer immensely owing to the incompetence of the polling staff.
It has been an old practice that the election commission deputes untrained presiding officers, assistant presiding officers and polling officers for polling work.
Most polling staff is nominated just three to five days before the election day. Most of them are hired from the education department, the water board, civic bodies like LDA, CDA, KDA, or from the municipal bodies.
This is a mockery of the most important phase of the election process and leads to irregularities and anomalies in the polling process.
Most of the irregularities pointed out by the judicial commission recently pertained to the polling staff, raising doubts about the transparency ofthe elections.
It is suggested that the ECP should give at least two months of training to the staf f selected for conducting polling or if that is not possible the ECP should outsource the hiring of manpower to any human resources firm of repute.
