OUR CORRESPONDENT
KATHUA: District administration organised special voter enrollment camps at 625 polling booths to cover left-out voters and provide an opportunity to eligible youth for inclusion in electoral rolls.
District Election Officer (Deputy Commissioner) Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, Addl DC Prasanna Ramaswami (RO Kathua), Gurmukh Singh SDM Basohli, Suraj Parkash ACR, Rajiv Charak SDM Billawar, Anwar Bandey SDM Bani, Sohan Lal SDM Hiranagar,ARO Anshul Garg, Tehsildars and BDOs supervised the enrollment camps in various areas of five Assembly segments of Kathua, Bani, Basohli, Billawar and Hiranagar. District administration had earlier constituted 625 Polling Booth Area Teams (PBATs) in August which organised today’s enrollment camps and reached out to voters for electoral literacy. More than 3200 officials of 5 departments are members of these PBATs.
As per reports from field 448 voters were enrolled in Bani, 974 in Basohli, 309 in Billawar, 622 in Kathua and 568 in Hiranagar Assembly segment, adding around 1 per cent more voters in the district electoral rolls.
On the sidelines of these special enrolment camps programmes were organised under SVEEP campaign Matdaan Mahotsav for greater electoral literacy and ethical and inducement-free voting. EVM demonstration camps and electoral pledge were organised at these camps which were coordinated by 77 Zonal Officers and Sector Officers. More than 70,000 pamphlets and pledge letters were distributed among participants at various polling booth camps.
At Dinga-Amb a special “Matdaan Haat” was organised by Tehsildar for electoral awareness and popularising the objectives of Election Commission of India regarding inducement free voting, voter enrolment, ethical voting, democratic rights, use of EVM, electoral process and other aspects were displayed. BDOs Marheen, Barnoti, Basohli and Lohai-Malhar also organised similar functions with larger participation. Tehsildar Billawar, Ramkote, Bani and Kathua organised awareness events under SVEEP.