Special Polling Arrangements for Physically Challenged

Source: The Hindu

All polling booths will have ramps and all EVMs will have Braille readers: Vidyashankar

BANGALORE: For the first time ever, physically challenged persons will participate in a general election with Braille-enabled electronic voting machines (EVMs), and with ramps installed at every polling centre. Even as this “historic milestone” is celebrated, disability rights activists are irked by inadequate awareness and publicity measures of electoral offices across the country.

“This oversight is in violation of a Supreme Court (SC) order,” alleged Javed Abidi, whose letter to the Chief Justice of India on the mistreatment of physically challenged persons during the 2004 elections resulted in a successful PIL in the Supreme Court.

Mr. Abidi, convener of the Disabled Rights Group (DRG), wrote to the Chief Election Commissioner twice in March, but in vain. “The Supreme Court has very clearly and specifically directed you to not only create special facilities for the physically challenged …but to also give sufficient publicity regarding these measures,” he wrote to the CEC. Mr. Abidi said that the Supreme Court order did not leave scope for any ambiguity. “Given that they had two years to plan, they should have heeded every word of the order,” he said.

So far, there has not been a single advertisement either in the print media, radio or on television, activists allege. The apex court order, delivered in October 2007, decrees: “Sufficient publicity be given in the print and electronic media… so that persons with disabilities are aware of the facilities beforehand and are thus encouraged to go and exercise their franchise.” The CEC had also put this down in black and white in a letter to State Governments and Chief Electoral Officers in 2007. “Many of the physically challenged persons are not likely to step out to vote because experiences have been full of suffering and humiliation for them,” said Mr. Abidi.

This historic development should have been the highlight of this election — that persons with disability are not an “invisible minority”.