Kavya had just turned 19 and was excited.
Not because he is old but because he will exercise his franchise that year.
However, on the day of voting, when he reached the booth with his family, his enthusiasm waned. The polling station was not accessible to persons with disabilities. With the ladder leading up to the EVM, she wondered how she would cast her vote.
An officer on duty eventually led him to a back entrance to which he claimed the ramp was attached. She walked down the path and found two wooden planks about a foot apart. With her wheelchair supported by four people, and with an overwhelming sense of disappointment, Kavya cast her vote.
But did he feel like an equal citizen?
India is home to the largest population of persons with disabilities. About 2.21 percent of its population has some form of disability. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, enacted in 2016, mandates accessibility of the electoral process under Section 11 of the Act.
It gives responsibility to the Election Commission of India to ensure that all polling stations are accessible, all necessary materials related to the process are available.
According to the Press Information Bureau, out of 91 million eligible voters, 6.2 million voters are disabled. The same report mentioned that the 2019 General Elections slogan was ‘Accessible Elections’ and there were many measures like mapping disabled voters to their nearest polling stations, installation of ramps, braille-embossed electoral photo ID cards and Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). ), transportation facilities and sign language interpreters to facilitate the process.
In a 2019 op-ed in The Hindustan Times, George Abraham, a social entrepreneur, motivational speaker and disability activist shared his experience of casting his vote with his wife, who escorted him. He was asked to fill Form 49A as he did not know Braille and relied on the support of his spouse to assist him.
“In the weeks that followed, my colleagues and I spoke with many blind and visually impaired people across the country about their experiences of voting. Many praised the ECI’s efforts to make these elections accessible, while some criticized the insensitive officials. There were some booths where the Braille list of candidates was missing. But overall, these elections have made a big improvement in terms of inclusion of people with disabilities,” he noted in the article.
In the last few years, the call for accessible elections from civil society organizations and within the ECI has grown stronger.
“The momentum for accessible elections was heightened within ECI and across the country when the National Voter’s Day in 2018 embraced its theme as Accessible Elections. At ECI, we continuously discussed and worked on all possible facilities at polling stations to ensure hassle-free voting for our citizens with disabilities, thus ECI issued a set of notices/circulars to all Chief Electoral Officers in this regard.I PWD within the system from National level, District and AC I have also facilitated their inclusion at grassroots level by including them in committees for accessible elections,” says Smita Sadashivan, who works as an accessibility consultant in disability law. Vidya Sagar’s unit in Chennai.
Although the government has tried to leave no one behind, the gap remains.
“Right now, the gaps are in the right understanding of access itself, its criteria and facilitation at the grassroots level which requires a lot of capacity building within the election machinery,” Smita adds.
Although 2019 is called the year of accessible elections, this year the government has been providing the facility of ‘vote from home’ or VFH to people with disabilities above 40 percent and people above 80 years of age.
From this year’s Lok Sabha elections, persons with disabilities and senior citizens above the age of 85 can register to vote from their homes using postal ballot papers. This accommodation is extended only to those who register in advance to do so. Voters availing this facility are required to have appropriate documentation proving their disability/age.
The registration process is as follows:
- 1. Make sure you have the necessary paperwork. For persons with disabilities, this will be a Unique Disability Identification Card (UDID) and for senior citizens a valid proof of age matching the voter list of their polling station.
- 2. Fill up a Form 12D – Letter of Intimation to the Assistant Returning Officer (for absentee voters) and submit it to your respective booth level officials. You can download the form using this link.
- 3. After this, the booth level officers of your polling station will visit your home once after the last date for withdrawal of nominations.
- 4. In case the voter is not available at home, they will be returned once before 26 April (the last day of voting for this cycle of elections). If the voter is not available for the second time, they will lose the opportunity to vote.
- 5. Please note that once a voter has applied for a postal ballot, they do not have the option of voting in person at a polling station.
These postal ballots will be counted separately from the votes cast at the polling stations and will be carried in sealed envelopes by booth level officials to ensure confidentiality.
If you need more details about the facilities for PwD voters, you can get them here on the official page of ECI.
If you want to speak to a representative of the Election Commission of India, you can call 1950 between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.
(Contributed by V-Shesh; Editing by Padmashri Pandey)