Thiruvananthapuram: Chief Electoral Officer on Monday appealed to the people of the state to come out in large numbers to vote and make the election process a big success and democracy stronger.
Mr Meena told DC that it was one and a half months of hectic activities for him and his entire team. “Our team tried to give the best. There were occasions when the team had to rise up for crisis management. During the process of candidate setting in the EVMs, some of the control units and VVPATs went out of order creating a crisis situation. Since we were left with little reserve, we had to airlift 5000 machines from Hyderabad and 3000 from Mumbai using defence aircraft. We carried out major operations overnight involving chief secretaries of Kerala, Maharasthra, Kerala House Delhi, airport authroiteis in Mumbai,” he added.
Mr Meena said a close watch would be kept on the social media to ensure that there is no attempt to unleash emotional issues, misleading information and posts that could trigger sectarian or communal feelings. Since the actual sources of such information are not known instantly, we would be seeing the help of police department and cyber experts to catch the mischief makers.
He said the people can also use C Vigil app for conveying any information regarding the polling.The CEO said that he was personally happy that 174 transgender voters could be enrolled. “This is a small beginning that we have made. We have to cover a lot of ground in the the coming year to enroll 10,000 transgenders in the state,” he said.
The Kiosk set up by the chief electoral officer in front of Secretariat which was entirely manned by transgender people, was a big hit. More than 10,000 people visited the counter.
Referring to the complaints of multiple names in electoral rolls, he said the issue had come to his notice. “It has come to our notice and we have directed the concerned officers to look into it. There are some cases where people have filed four five applications at a particular polling station and their names have four or five times. But that does not mean they will be allowed to vote five times. We will not allow any double voting,” he said.
