Hyderabad: To facilitate citizens, the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has decided to set up 84 mock polling centres to ensure complete awareness on the use of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
A corporation official said that the voter awareness programme would be held for a month. Under the awareness drive, 44 EVM/VVPAT centres and nine mobile polling stations have been deployed for three different zones across 15 Assembly constituencies in Hyderabad. The civic body has now decided to set up another 40 voter awareness camps to facilitate citizens. The location of awareness centres will be available on the MYGHMC App.
“This is a part of our voter awareness campaign which we are taking up in Hyderabad district. We are specially focusing on differently-abled voters this time. In that context, we have launched nine mobile polling stations. We want people to get a feel of actual polling stations. Voters in urban areas do not come to the polling booths due to various reasons. So, instead of keeping a stationed polling booth, we are actually sending the polling stations to the people in this format,” a senior GHMC official said.
A special awareness camp is being arranged for the differently-abled people. GHMC is also providing a live demo to the public at the awareness camp.
Furthermore, the Election Commission has arranged a dots system on the ballot box which will help visually impaired individuals cast their votes. The mobile polling stations are being sent to colleges and villages to create awareness on the new VVPAT system for those who are eligible to vote.
Two armed guards have been deployed at each of the 84 awareness centres during operational hours (from 10 am to 5 pm). The GHMC has appealed to voters to utilise the opportunity and get aware of the system of using EVMs and VVPATs.
