Tamil Nadu government employees and teachers who are involved in the polling duties and election work are treated unfairly as more than one lakh of them have not received the postal forms and hence have not been able to cast votes.
These employees were involved in the election work across the state and they were not been able to cast votes on the polling day.
According to the election rule, they are given form 12 to cast the postal votes in designated centers. Otherwise, they have to send it by post to the jurisdictional district election officer.
As per the reports by the sources, nearly 4 lakh employees and teachers who were involved in polling work, only 2.75 lakh received the form 12. Others have accused the government of purposefully denying them the opportunity to vote in order to punish them for participating in the strike this year.
Chief electoral officer Satyabrata Sahoo said that they distributed 2.75 lakh postal forms and only 1.85 lakh postal votes were received from the officials and teachers. He also said that they had also distributed EDC (Election duty certificate) to 1.18 lakh volunteer and staff engaged in election duty.
While government officials and teachers can exercise postal votes, NGOs and other volunteer engaged in the election work are given EDC through which a person can vote in any booth in the constituency.
The CEO said that enough forms were distributed and they are hopeful that everyone gets the opportunity to exercise their votes. Officials can’t send their postal votes till the counting date.
