Media persons, authorized by the Election Commission of India (ECI) for the poll day, have been brought under the essential services category, facilitating them to exercise their franchise by postal ballot in the ensuing elections in poll-bound Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala. The Indian Journalists Union (IJU), welcoming the decision (ECI), said it addresses “a long-pending grievance of media persons.”
IJU president K Sreenivas Reddy and secretary general Balwinder Singh Jammu said, the media fraternity should utilize the opportunity and perform their “sacred duty” in democracy. Till now, ECI had allowed postal ballot facility for senior citizens above 80 years, people with disabilities, Covid-19 positive (also suspected and quarantined) individuals and persons employed in essential services to enable them to vote.
In a separate statement, northeast India-based Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA), appreciating ECI for granting postal-ballot facilities to media persons under the specific category, “where other beneficiaries include the employees of electricity, health department, telecom, railways, aviation, fire, ambulance, shipping services, etc.”, said, it had been demanding the facility, as scribes could not vote because of their professional duties on the particular day.
“First, most of the media workers based in the city are non-natives and they had to move to their home town or villages and secondly, many of them had to perform their duties on the date of polling”, JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria said, adding, “The media persons often miss the opportunity to exercise their voting rights as they cannot leave the work place on the poll day and thus every time a large number of valuable votes go to waste.”
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