From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Dec 3: The ensuing elections to fill up the 25 seats in Karnataka’s Legislative Council scheduled to be held on December 27 will be carried out by using the age-old printed ballot papers and without EVMs.
The absence of EVMs is because of the preferential voting system being followed for filling up the 25 seats in State’s Upper House.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) will be using ballot papers and photographs of all contesting candidates in elections scheduled to be held on December 27.
Karnataka’s Chief Electoral Officer Anil Kumar Jha said electronic voting machines and party symbols would not be used in polls to be held from local body constituencies.
The ballot papers having photographs of candidates would help the electorate to identify candidates and make their choice easily.
Also, inedible ink would not be used.
The CEO said the polling officers would provide sketch pens the voters to cast preferential votes.
Jha the electorate would, however, be given an opportunity to cast NOTA (None of the above) votes.
Illiterate voters, who have been identified from the information provided in the sworn affidavits at the time of their elections to the respective local bodies, would be allowed to take the help of a literate person to cast their votes, wherein the voter would have to mark his preference in numerical order.
The ECI has not fixed any limit on poll expenditure of the contesting candidates.
The voting would be held in offices of all gram panchayats, taluk and ZP panchayats, city corporations, city municipal corporations, town municipal corporations, and town panchayats.
A total of 6516 polling stations would be established across the State, which will be having 1,08,454 voters to elect the 25 MLCs.
Urban and Rural Development and Panchayat Raj departments should not come out with new orders during the enforcement of model electoral code.
The election authorities would monitor candidates campaigning and take action if they influenced voters by offering money or other inducements.
The final notification of the voters list with omission and addition, if any, would be released on December 9, Jha said.