Voters' list gets priority on bandh day

RANCHI: Despite the statewide bandh called by Ajsu Party over the murder of party leader Tileshwar Sahu, thousands of people turned up at the booths set up by the Election Commission across the state to get their names enlisted in the voter's list on Sunday.
As many as 24,648 booths were built across the state and 2,358 in Ranchi alone where booth-level officers (BLOs) were deployed to show the voter lists to people and enroll those, whose names were not there on the list.
P K Jajoria, chief electoral officer of Jharkhand, said, "Form 6 was being distributed on the booths for all those who wanted to get their names enrolled on the voters' list."
Earlier, there was a plan to hold the camp only for a day. But keeping the bandh in mind, a decision to keep the booths open on Monday as well was taken . Jajoria said, "Many people were not able to reach the booths due to the statewide bandh, so we extended the camp for another day."
The turnout in Ranchi was so high that form 6 got over in the first half of the day. Vinay Chaubey, deputy commissioner and district electoral officer of Ranchi, said, "I received calls from around 20 booths in the morning where the form 6 got over. New forms were sent to those booths immediately."
On the other hand, there were some booths in which the turnout in morning was zero but by noon many voters started turning up.
Apart from getting their names registered in the voters' list, even those people who did not get their voter ID cards after applying for it visited the booth to request for the same.
Choubey said, "There are around 20,000 voters in Ranchi whose voter ID cards have been made, but none reached them. We will be sending those ids within a week. Also, around 9000 people have applied for the voter ID cards, but did not submit their photographs. These people also submitted their photographs on the booth on Sunday."
Some booths witnessed chaos as the BLOs refused to consider Aadhar card as a verification document. Voters were asked to furnish other documents such as ration cards and admit cards to testify their identities for which they had to rush home.
"We were asked not to consider Aadhar card as a verification document," said a BLO officer at a city booth. However, Jajoria denied issuing any such instruction.
This confusion prevailed across many booths till early afternoon and sparked heated verbal exchanges between the voters and the BLOs. However, the air was cleared by Ranchi subdivisional magistrate (SDM), Amit Kumar, who visited the booths and issued necessary instructions.