With the Election Commission (EC) mandating the Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETPBS) for the use of service voters, the difficulties and hardships encountered by service voters, especially armed forces personnel hailing from the State and serving in border and remote areas of the country, will be a thing of the past.
ETBPS, developed by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, in collaboration with the EC is being used for the first time for a general election.
The system enables a service voter to cast his/her vote using an electronically received postal ballot from anywhere outside the constituency. The record officer who receives a batch of postal ballots electronically will download it and operate using a one-time password. The voter will exercise his/ her franchise on the postal ballot, sign it and also get it signed from his higher-up and despatch it to the Returning Officer.
“We are using it in all the 20 Lok Sabha constituencies as mandated by the EC. We have already despatched 54,000 covers to the defence personnel hailing from the State and serving in various military command areas and the software has been activated,” Chief Electoral Officer of Kerala Teeka Ram Meena told The Hindu on Friday.
Aimed at enhancing the voting percentage of those in service, the e-postal ballot system can avoid delays in postal ballots reaching their respective recording office. In the previous system, the ballot papers were sent by the electoral authorities through registered post.
“We have provided four forms in four envelopes. The postal ballot should reach the Returning Officers of 20 Lok Sabha constituencies before counting of votes,” Mr. Meena said.
For the officials on election duty in the State, the CEO said polling centre would be set up in the respective distribution centre from where the polling materials are to be supplied. The police personnel deployed for election in the State are yet to get this facility and postal ballot is being relied upon.
The ETPBS was first used in a byelection in the Nellithope Assembly constituency in Puducherry in 2016 and on pilot basis in the State during the Chengannur bypoll. The pilot and trials were carried out in U.P., Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur Assembly elections.