Election Commission to issue directions to Returning Officers to complete the counting of postal ballots before finalising the EVM counting. ISN’T COUNTING OF POSTAL BALLOTS COMPLETE BEFORE EVM COUNTING IS FINALISED? Before 2019, it was a mandate to complete the counting. But in 2019, the EC brought some changes and these guidelines were removed.

WHO ARE ELIGIBLE TO CAST THEIR VOTE VIA POSTAL BALLOT?

  • Service voters
  • Electors on Election Duty
  • Voters above age 80 years (Earlier it was 85 years)
  • Persons with Disabilities
  • Voters under preventive detention
  • Voters on essential duties on election days
WHY DID EC REMOVE GUIDELINES WRT POSTAL BALLOTS? After the 2019 elections, the EC decided to tweak the guidelines as the number of postal ballots had gone up, especially after the introduction of the
  • Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETPBS), and
  • The mandatory counting of VVPAT slips of five randomly selected polling stations per Assembly constituency or Assembly segment.
WHAT IS ELECTRONICALLY TRANSMITTED POSTAL BALLOT SYSTEM? The Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System (ETPBS) is developed by the Election Commission of India and implemented in line with the existing Postal Ballot System. Postal Ballot will be transmitted through Electronic means to the voters. It enables the voters to cast their vote on an electronically received postal ballot from their preferred location, which is outside their originally assigned voting constituency, and send back the marked postal ballot through the post. THE PROCEDURE IN ETPBS Here in ETPBS system this postal ballot is sent in two parts i.e.,
  • e-Postal Ballot
  • e-PB PIN.
The e-Postal Ballot is sent to the Unit officer of the service officer which will be a password protected PDF. Similarly the e-PB PIN will be sent to the Record officer of the service voter. The Service voter has to collect e-PB and e-PB PIN from both officers, take print outs and follow the instructions to cast the vote. The e-PB needs to be sent on the provided address before the counting date by Post. https://www.eci.gov.in/etpbs

BENEFITS OF SERVICE VOTER PORTAL

  • Secured way to transmit the postal ballot to the service voter in a remote area
  • End to end encryption with multiple secured feature to avoid the duplicate PB
  • Multiple checks and validation to ensure the correct e-PB gets transmitted
  • Facility to transmit the e-PB for AC and PC election.