Mumbai: For the first time, the entire Mumbai Police force will cast their votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections through a postal ballot. Earlier, police who were on election duty, were given a choice to either cast their vote in person at the polling station or opt for postal vote. However, this year, it has been made mandatory to cast their vote by postal ballot, so as to be present on time for election duty.
Over the years, many policemen could not exercise their right to vote due to election duty deployment at an area away from their allotted polling booth. Hence, the initiative to mandate postal ballot in Mumbai Police was taken by Manjunath Singe, deputy commissioner of police (operations).
“This time for the Lok Sabha elections, we have planned the entire police force, with its 48,000 policemen, to be able to use the postal ballot. It becomes very difficult for them to reach their constituency and cast votes physically, which is why, this time proper guidance was given to them,” said Singe.
To make sure the participation of police personnel in the election, a ‘Form 12’ has been distributed to all police station across the city. The only condition put forth to policemen for casting their vote through post was to apply for their postal ballot registration to the election commission at least 15 days before the day of voting. After they are registered for postal voting service, they would receive.
In a bid to eliminate the element of confusion, the suburban collector has also conducted training programmes for election-duty officers on the postal ballot and the importance of casting votes, said a senior police official. In the previous Lok Sabha elections in 2014, only 8,000 police officials had opted for the postal ballot to cast their vote while they were on election duty.
A police official said on request of confidentiality, “Earlier the police had the option of casting their vote through postal ballot, but we always deemed it as a threat. Since the votes were cast through postal service, anybody could open the envelope and know our political preference, putting the confidentiality in jeopardy.”
After mandating the postal ballot, an officials from the election commission would visit police stations and collect the postal ballots, eliminating threat of disclosing the voter’s political inclination. “After learning about the fact, we no longer fear postal ballots as a means to cast our votes,” said the police official.
