28th January 2016

- The Hindu

Making voting all-inclusive

With the aim of making voting in the coming Assembly election more inclusive, Virudhunagar district administration has launched a unique exercise of enrolling physically challenged persons, especially the hearing and speech impaired, for elector’s photo identity card (EPIC).

Taking advantage of the four-year B. Tech. course for speech and hearing impaired persons offered by Kalasalingam University, Krishnankoil, officials involved in election work conducted a special awareness-cum-enrolment camp at the deemed university last week.

“Our objective is to make the voting process all-inclusive. We were able to enrol 158 students for EPIC at Kalasalingam University camp,” said V. Rajaraman, Collector.

Officials, led by Sivakasi Sub-Collector Amar Kushawha, communicated to the students the need to exercise their franchise. Certain complex issues were explained in sign language by the teachers.

The university offers B. Tech. in Civil, Computer Science, Information Technology and Mechanical Engineering streams for students with a pass in SSLC exam.

Concessions are also offered to students for stay and study. It had also been planned to organise special EPIC enrolment camps in colleges across the district, said Mr. Amar. Students above 18 years of age and who had not got EPIC in their home towns would be enrolled online with the help of data entry operators at the camps.

These camps would be held between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. on January 25.