In Bengaluru, only 7% of elders opt for postal ballots

BENGALURU: Only 7,554 or 7% of the 1.1 lakh voters aged over 85 years in Bengaluru have opted to use postal ballots in the April 26 Lok Sabha elections.Officials from the election wing of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), say the Election Commission had provided an opportunity to these voters to file Form 12D (a letter of intimation to the assistant returning officer as an absentee voter) by April 2 to vote through postal ballots. However, only a fraction of voters who fall in the category signed up for the facility.The three Lok Sabha constituencies in the city: Bangalore Central, North, and South, have 95,128 people aged over 85 years. The remaining 1,883 fall under RR Nagar and Yeshwantpur assembly segments, which are part of Bangalore Rural Lok Sabha constituency, and Yelahanka assembly segment, which is part of the Chikkaballapur Lok Sabha constituency. Sources say there are two main reasons for the low numbers: A lack of awareness and a preference among many to visit polling stations to cast their votes.Besides seniors, there are 30,693 specially challenged voters, but only 314 of them have registered for postal ballots.BBMP officials said a team assigned for election duty will visit homes of senior citizens and specially challenged voters who have registered for postal ballots between April 13 and April 18. Officials will inform eligible voters of the time and date they will visit homes to issue and collect filled-in postal ballots.