Chief Electoral Officer Abhijit Sinha, organized a workshop on mapping/identification and enrolment of Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) in the Electoral Roll, with AEOs and special educators under the SSA and School Education department at Hotel Japfü, on November 3.
Abhijit Sinha, in the introductory speech welcomed the special educators and AEOs to the workshop.
Sinha said the workshop had been planned primarily to ensure that election officers at the ground level were adequately trained to identify persons with disabilities and ensure their enrollment in the electoral roll.
The CEO added that at present, only about 2500 PwDs were identified in the electoral roll which was low compared to the population of the state. According to Sinha, there are various reasons for the low enrollment, major among them being apathy on the part of election officials when it came to making that extra effort to reach out to the PwDs.
He also commented that the other reason could be the BLOs being not trained enough to properly identify PwDs.
To eliminate these issues, the special educators being trained will later conduct elaborate training programs for BLOs so that they will be better equipped to identify and then enroll PwDs.
Sinha thanked Disability Rights activist and State Icon (PwDs), Diethono Nakhro and the Commissioner of PwDs, Dr. Atha, for coming forward as resource persons because both of them had good experience in issues concerning PwDs which, he said, would immensely benefit the participants.
The workshop was attended by 49 special educators and AEOs. Diethono Nakhro spoke on enabling participation of people with disabilities in the electoral process. She gave a short description about disabilities sating it is broadly divided into five categories: Physical disability, intellectual disability, mental illness, disability due to chronic medical conditions, and multiple disabilities. She also said that all citizens of India over the age of 18 have the right to vote including people who live with disabilities.
A second session was later held separately where the CEO and the district AEOs discussed general elections matters like EVM, conduct of elections, voters list etc.