Over 28,000 postal ballots undelivered in Haryana

Blame it on the wrong addresses or delay in data updation, over 28,000 paramilitary personnel from Haryana have missed out on their chance to cast their votes in the Lok Sabha elections.

Of the over 1.02 lakh postal ballots dispatched, as many as 28,943 have so far retur ned as undelivered to election office.

Stating that only 1,388 marked postal ballots have so far been received, senior officials of the election department said that the wrong addresses of defence personnel, who were supposed to vote through postal ballots, was said to be the main reason behind the non-delivery of ballots.

The worst hit LS seat has so far been Rohtak which has 25,730 postal ballots of which 6,479 ballots have returned as undelivered, while only 162 marked postal ballots have been received by the department.

Rohtak is followed by Bhiwani-Mahendergarh which had 24,289 postal ballots of which 6,242 returned undelivered and only 237 marked ones were received.

Likewise, Gurgaon which has 14,105 postal ballots has had 5,312 returned undelivered, while only 92 marked ballots have been received.

As many 1,316 postal ballots have returned undelivered from Ambala LS seat, which has 6,846 defence personnel voters, while only 91 marked ones have so far been received. Only 167 marked ballots have been received from Kurukshetra seat. which has 5,176 postal ballots of which 1,278 returned as undelivered.

Only 39 marked postal ballots came from Sirsa which has 1,982 of which 217 have already come as undelivered.

In Hisar seat which has 7,513 postal ballots, only 157 marked postal ballots have been received while 2,098 returned as undelivered.

The situation in Karnal which has 4,951 such ballots is not better as only 90 marked postal ballots returned to the department, while 2,169 returned as undelivered. In Sonepat which has 7,401 such ballots, only 312 marked ones returned to the department, while 2,711 returned as undelivered. Also in Faridabad, which has 4,029 postal ballots, only 41 marked ones retur ned, while 1,121 couldn’t be delivered.

However, when contacted, the chief electoral officer, Shrikant Walgad, held that situation has been almost same in the past elections too though the department expected more marked ballots in days to come. Stating that it is the defence ministry which sends the defence personnel’s addresses to state election department, he said that the department would, however, also soon take up the matter with Election Commission of India.

Meanwhile, it may be recalled that the principal opposition party in Haryana, Indian National Lok Dal which had pointed out the same recently, also submitted on Tuesday a complaint to chief election commissioner at New Delhi, against the wrong addresses on the postal ballots meant for serving defence personnel because of which the defence personnel could not cast their votes.