Short film to educate PwD on voting methods

The civic body, which has already identified nearly 7,000 such voters in the city, is making necessary arrangements for them at the polling booths.

According to corporation official, “The campaign will be conducted at three places in Chennai on Thursday. We are also making a short film to create awareness among the PwD voters.”

In another such initiative, the civic body has conducted ‘Chunav Pathshala’ (Election School) campaign in all the 3,754 polling booths in Chennai district.

“The campaign is a part of systematic voters’ education and electoral participation (SVEEP) activity. As many as 16 teams were constituted in 16 Assembly constituencies in the district. Each team had members, including senior citizens, first-time voters, persons with disabilities and women,” the official added.

The teams visited all the polling booths in the past three days and trained voters on using electronic voting machines (EVM).

Meanwhile, a differently-abled association has blamed the civic body for its incomplete enumeration of PwD voters.

“There are nearly 28,000 differently-abled persons in the city. Of them, at least 18,000 would be eligible to cast votes.

However, officials claim that they have identified only 7,000 such voters,” S Namburajan, state general secretary of Tamil Nadu Association for the Rights of All Types of Differently Abled and Caregivers, said, adding that the civic body failed to consult with associations while conducting the awareness campaign.

The corporation has announced a dedicated mobile phone number to which the PwD voters could call and seek assistance on the polling day. However, it has failed to evoke the expected response.