CEC nixes plea to withdraw pink ballot papers

​Hyderabad: Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) O P Rawat rejected the Opposition parties’ plea to withdraw pink ballot papers on the EVMs. The parties contended that the colour was associated with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) party and voters may get influenced with the pink colour.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) delegation led by Rawat conducted a review on poll preparedness in Telangana with District Election Officers, SPs and other top officials on the second day here on Friday. Addressing the press here before leaving to New Delhi, the CEC said that the practice of using pink ballots for assembly elections has been in force since 1952. It was the TRS which adopted pink as its official colour recently. At this juncture, it is not possible to change the ballot colour as it required an amendment to the Representation of the People’s act 1952.

The official said that Accessibility Observers have been appointed for the first time in the State Assembly Elections. The Commission has also deployed General, Expenditure and police observers and micro observers in the State. The Commission also directed State Electoral authorities to establish all women managed polling booths, which will be managed by women staff including security officials.

As part of expenditure monitoring, Rawat said that the Commission directed the officials to undertake very effective measures to prevent money/token and gifts distribution and check the distribution of liquor and drug during election process.

Information Technology based applications SAMADHAN (Public Grievance Redressal and Monitoring System),SUVIDHA (Single Window Permission System) and SUGAM (Vehicle Management System) are being used during elections for improved facilitation of the various stakeholders like electors, election managers, political parties and candidates, the CEC added.