Poll Officers Can't Force Electors Who 'Refuse' To Vote At Booths: Voting Rule

There’s a proper to “refuse to vote” even after voters register their Ids earlier than the presiding officer.

Kolkata:

At a time when the Election Fee pledges to go away no stone unturned to deliver eligible voters to polling stations to train their franchise, not many electors are conscious of their proper to “refuse to vote” even after registering their identities earlier than the presiding officer.

That proper, which is separate from the availability to vote below NOTA, will be exercised below the ‘Conduct of Elections Guidelines, 1961 Rule 49-O’, which elaborates the little-known choice for electors to abstain from voting even after reaching the polling sales space.

Whereas the NOTA (None Of The Above) choice permits voters to precise their insecurity in any of the candidates looking for mandate, the ‘refusal to vote’ choice permits an elector to shun the ballot course of in its entirety.

The 49-O clause directs the presiding officer that when an elector refuses to vote inside a sales space after having his credentials verified, the officer shall put “a comment to this impact in opposition to the entry in Kind 17A and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained in opposition to such a comment”.

“This isn’t a brand new introduction of rights. It has existed for a while. The electors, although, have little or no concept about it. Most individuals are unaware of this selection,” a senior official of the EC informed PTI.

The abstention from voting would, after all, play no position in affecting ballot consequence and the candidate who secures the very best variety of legitimate votes polled, no matter his profitable margin, can be declared elected, he clarified.

On whether or not the EC would elevate the notice of the electors on this regard, the official mentioned, “There is no such thing as a such plan in the mean time.” Underlining the benefit of rule 49-O, he acknowledged that the rule “supplied an choice to reject all candidates whereas concurrently protecting a verify on bogus voting”.

Statistics from the EC state that within the 2019 version of normal elections, 1,389 votes have been ‘rejected attributable to different causes (at polling station)’ throughout India.

It couldn’t be ascertained, although, whether or not all or a fraction of those votes have been rejected for folks exercising their rights below rule 49-O.

The rule states that “if an elector, subsequent to his electoral roll quantity duly entered within the ‘Register of Voters’ Kind 17A in addition to his signature/ thumb impression duly taken, decides to not vote, he shall not be compelled to solid his vote”.

“Within the Kind, instead of ‘Below Rule’, left with out voting or ‘Refused to Vote’ will probably be inserted for these electors who after signing in ‘Register of Voters’ want to depart with out voting,” it says.

Within the occasion of the “allot” button on the EVM’s ‘Management Unit’, which readies the poll unit for “recording a vote”, getting activated when an elector refuses to vote, the presiding officer or the third polling officer ought to direct the subsequent voter to proceed to the voting compartment to file his/her vote, the ballot panel official identified.

Nevertheless, if the “allot” button has been pressed to “launch voting” on the poll unit when the elector refuses to vote, the presiding officer would then should reboot the management unit by killing its energy and disconnect the VVPAT, earlier than enabling the machine to just accept the subsequent vote, he mentioned.

“The facility must be switched on after the ‘busy’ indicator goes off and the ‘shut’ button turns into practical to shut the ballot,” he defined.
 

(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)

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