Opposition parties fear postal ballots!

New Delhi: Postal ballot is never considered very important in electoral politics. Rarely would this have even affected the results.

But suddenly the importance of postal ballot is increasing. Anti-BJP parties contesting the elections are worried over postal ballots as they are casting unverified doubts on the Election Commission as well as the administration.

That is because they feel that BJP or a ruling party can influence the results with the help of postal ballot, by taking advantage of the system.

Keep in mind that earlier, the right to vote by postal ballot was only for the army personnel-officers and the employees conducting elections. Now, people above 80 years of age have been allowed to vote by postal ballot.

Earlier, when the counting of votes started, the postal ballots were counted first and after that the EVMs were opened but now the postal ballots are counted alongside, till the counting is over. Another change is that postal ballots were given through Booth Level Officer (BLO) earlier but now they are being sent by post.

A worrying thing which has come up is that government servants who vote by postal ballot have to carry a copy of their identity card with them to ensure transparency but at the same time this breaches the secrecy of the vote and a government servant who is voting for the opposition may feel compromised.

During the first phase of polling in Uttar Pradesh, such an incident happened on at least one booth in Ghaziabad that the votes of many members of the Muslim family, who had come to cast their votes, had supposedly already been cast by postal ballot, while they were not aware of it.

That's how the opposition feel that there can be some play with the postal ballot, especially in those seats where the margin of victory and defeat will be less.