Startling revelation have come to fore about the preparedness of the Constituencies to facilitate voters with disabilities through RTI replies followed up by our fellow activist Satendra Singh! 6 Constituencies believe in the myth since a person with mental disability cannot be an elector, the question of voting does not arise, whereas in the eyes of law, every person (including mentally ill, mentally challenged, medically ill, hospitalized, and incarcerated) over the age of 18 years is fully competent to vote unless declared otherwise by a court of law. The State Election Commission has no information on number of disabled voters and they claim that all voting booths have accessible toilets... a blatant lie indeed!
The Cuttack city on the other hand claims to be all geared for the election- not sure the ground reality though! The claims is that all the 2,171 booths of the district would have ramps and wheelchairs to facilitate the movement of physically challenged voters. Sign-language experts would be appointed at the polling booths to help the hearing impaired voters to understand the process of voting. Similarly, the visually-challenged voters would be assisted with Braille ballot papers- Says the Collector. We need to urgently hand hold the process since there is no point complaining after we miss the bus. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bhubaneswar/Poll-booths-in-Cuttack-to-be-disable-friendly/articleshow/31727908.cms -- Warm regards, Subhash Chandra Vashishth Mobile: +91 (11) 9811125521 Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. Consider environment! Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in Disclaimer: 1. Contents of the mails, factual, or otherwise, reflect the thinking of the person sending the mail and AI in no way relates itself to its veracity; 2. AI cannot be held liable for any commission/omission based on the mails sent through this mailing list..
