Meeting with CEO, Manipur for disability inclusion

October 05, 2016

With Manipur going into Assembly polls in the early part of 2017, wheels have been set in motion for finalising electoral rolls and taking measures for inclusion of special categories of voters. Shri Vivek Kumar Dewangan, Chief Electoral Officer, Manipur called for a meeting in his office on October 1, 2016, with disability NGOs / Disabled Peoples Organizations members of various districts across Manipur. Also present on the occasion was Shri Karam Bobo Singh, Officer on Special Duty, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Manipur.

Shishu Sarothi, Guwahati in collaboration with Disability Law Unit – South, Chennai had advocated for and liaised with district electoral officers in Assam for ensuring disability inclusion in the elections held in Assam in April this year. Now in the next phase, the said two organizations are actively involved in working with the Manipur Election Officials to strengthen the democratic process by inclusion of all disabled voters in the ensuing elections.

Towards this, Amvalika Senapati, representative of Shishu Sarothi, present in the said meeting shared various interventions for disability inclusion and shared that it is crucial that District Electoral Officers conduct accessible exclusive enrolment camps for persons with disabilities with a prior announcement, so as to ensure inclusion of disabled voters in the electoral rolls.

Emphasis was laid on the need to also include people with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities in voter registration. Camps could be held for data collection of persons with disabilities. Suggestion was put forth for deputation of Election Accessibility Nodal officer for persons with disabilities from the Department of Social Welfare or State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities.

The need to ensure accessible website was emphasised upon as it is crucial that all election related information can be accessed by all people including people with various disabilities.

Other important points raised were training of Booth Level Officers (BLOs), Zonal Officers and Sectoral Officers of various constituencies on provisions to be made for disabled voters in all polling stations and creating awareness through media and printed materials on rights of disabled voters and facilities to be provided for them on the day of the polls.

Mr. V.K. Dewangan, Chief Electoral Officer, Manipur while welcoming all suggestions put forth, laid emphasis on the fact that urgent steps have to be taken to ensure inclusion of disabled voters in the Electoral Rolls, the last date of which is October 21 for the state. He observed that while there would be around 35,000 to 40,000 disabled voters in Manipur, data available with the Social Welfare department was only of a mere 19,137 disabled voters.

He shared that all steps are being taken to ensure that the voters whose data are not available would also be included. He mentioned that 60 Nos. of Voter Registration & Facilitation Centres have been set up across all districts and these could also help identify the disabled voters. Besides, Gram Sabhas held on October 2 would be a platform to identify persons with disabilities and that special instructions had already been issued to percolate the message down on the need to identify as many disabled voters as possible.

Mr. Dewangan also appealed to all local partners present to assist in translation of training / awareness materials shared by Shishu Sarothi and DLU-South into the local vernacular for greater reach amongst the community and identify points of contacts for all districts so that necessary liaising could be taken forward with the District Electoral Officers in the respective districts.

Contanct of CEO, Manipur
Shri Vivek Kumar Dewangan
Chief Electoral Officer, Manipur
E-mail ID: [email protected]
Telephone: +91-385-2450140 (Office)