Guwahati, March 10: Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA), while appreciating the Election Commission of India (ECI) for granting postal-ballot facilities to media persons (under essential services voters category), urges the beneficiaries including the scribes to exercise their franchises consciously.
It may be mentioned that the ECI has allowed voting through postal ballots for absentee voters employed in various essential services like electricity, health department, telecom, railways, aviation, fire, ambulance, shipping services, media persons (authorized by ECI for the poll day), etc so that the beneficiaries can vote even on duty.
Various journo-bodies including JFA was raising voices for postal ballot facilities to media persons for many years arguing that thousands of media employees could not vote for their professional duties. First, most of the media workers based in the city are non-natives and they had to move to their home town or villages on the poll day. Secondly, many of them have to perform their duties on the date of polling.
“The media persons often missed the opportunity to exercise their voting rights as they cannot leave the work place on the poll day and thus a large number of valuable votes had gone waste,” said JFA President Rupam Barua and Secretary Nava Thakuria, adding that it is now the turn for scribes to show sincerity towards the ECI opportunity.
