EC to restrict number of voters in polling stations; 1400 for rural, 1200 for urban

New Delhi: There shouldn’t be more than 1,400 voters in a polling station as the use of paper trail machines may result in electors taking extra time to exercise their franchise and lead to crowding at the voting centres, the Election Commission has told its ground personnel. [caption id=“attachment_2096799” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] In a letter to all chief electoral officers, the poll panel has said that “as the Commission has decided to use VVPAT in all the future elections, no relaxation/deviation will be allowed in the upper limit of 1200 and 1400 electors in rural and urban polling stations respectively. The commission has, therefore, directed all the polling stations with electors beyond the said upper limit will be invariably rationalised/modified…” It also said that creation of new polling stations would be resorted to “only after rationalising the sections to adjacent polling stations”. The voter verified paper audit trail is a machine which dispenses a slip with the symbol of the party for which a person has voted for. The slip drops in a box but the voter cannot take it home. The voters see voter-verifiable paper audit trail slip for seven seconds, which would be an acknowledgement receipt for the party they voted for in the election. As voters watch to see the paper slip appear in a window, they may spend additional few seconds in the voting compartment. If there are large number of voters, the overall time to cast the vote may go up. To avoid the situation where people turn back on seeing long queues, the rationalisation of polling stations has been planned, a poll panel functionary said explaining the logic behind the letter.