News

Volume 5 Issue 5 - March 01, 2007

Visually impaired people exercise their franchise independently

D.N.I.S. News Network – In a shining example for all other states to follow, the Election Commission has set up a separate polling booth for visually impaired people at National Institute for Visually Handicapped (N.I.V.H.) in the Rajpur Assembly constituency of Uttarkhand, where they can cast their vote independently. It is the first one of its kind in the country.

More encouraging is the fact that visually impaired voters used the facility in the recent polls held in Uttarkhand. For visually impaired Prashanth Dabral, a music teacher at N.I.V.H. it was a pleasant surprise when he was told at the polling booth that he could cast his vote with the help of Electronic Voting Machine (E.V.M.).

“You cannot imagine my joy when I pressed the button on the E.V.M. I had never exercised franchise without assistance,” he said. The names of candidates and their symbols are inscribed in Braille on the E.V.M.

The polling booth at the institute has 383 voters. N. Ravi Shanker, Uttarkhand C.E.O. said the separate polling booth was set up on an experimental basis for the first time in the country.