Maintaining secrecy of vote seems the biggest hindrance for visually impaired voters of the state. As they are not allowed to cast vote themselves and have to do the same through an assistant, they have no alternative except believing that the latter will undoubtedly vote their preferred candidate. 

“None of the polling booths allows us to vote without a helper. Moreover, the beep voice heard after pressing the Braille serial number of a candidate does not ensure that our assistant has voted the candidate of our choice,” Vivek Kumar Singh, president of Cricket Association for Blind in Jharkhand belonging to Jamshedpur said.

“Most of the presiding officers hesitate to explain us the details of Braille digits on Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). In this digitization world, election commission can introduce speaking software in the EVM like that installed in mobile phones,” he added.

Similarly, Bipad Baran Ghosh, a visually impaired social activist of Jamtara aged 41 years said, “Both educated and uneducated people of our category have probable chances of being fooled by our assistant. Even if we are aware of the party and their candidates, we are restricted to cast our own vote. This is not fair.”

Gopal Prasad, a resident of Latehar who cast vote among the blind voters in the first polling phase on November 25 pointed on the ability to retain their candidate’s serial number since it is not safe to have complete faith on the assistant. “For educated voters like us, revising candidate’s serial number is not an issue. But, the illiterate voters seeking support of assistants are often fooled by latter. State chief electoral officer should atleast interact with the blind voters of Ranchi once so that their problems can be solved,” he said.

Similar were the woes of 78 year old Shirin Purty, a visually impaired denizen of the state capital. Jajoria however, expressed Election Commission’s limitation on “special vote facilities for such differently abled voters”.

“Blind voters do have the option of voting themselves. Until last Lok Sabha, we used pre-2006 EVMs wherein Braille stickers bearing serial number of a candidate were pasted. The serial numbers are engraved on the 2006 EVMs being used in the ongoing polls. Apart from this, no other initiative can be taken,” he said.

Sources maintained it was in the last Lok Sabha polls that Booth Level Officers, for the first time were directed by the Election Commission to take care of blind voters as well as other specially abled-voters.

Source: http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/ranchi/right-to-secrecy-a-predicament-for-visually-challenged-voters.html