POLL

Appointment of Polling Agents _ their Identification (dt 28.02.1996).

Election Commission's Letter No. 576/11/96/JUD-II, Dated : 28-2-1996, addressed to The Chief Electoral Officers of all States and Union Territories.
______________________________________________________________________

Subject :- Appointment of Polling Agents - identification.

I am directed to invite your reference to the Commission's letter No. 576/11/96/JUD-II, dated 24th January, 1996, on the subject cited, in which it was directed that three copies of the photographs of each of their polling agents shall be supplied by the contesting candidates to the Returning Officer concerned.

2. The Commission has directed that these three copies shall be made use of as under:-

(i) One copy of the photograph will be retained by the Returning Officer for his record and the remaining two copies of photograph will be supplied to the Presiding Officer of the polling station concerned along with other election materials;

(ii) Of these two copies, so supplied to the Presiding Officer, one copy will be retained by the Presiding Officer for his record;

(iii) the third copy will be given by the Presiding Officer to the polling agent concerned when he appears before him (Presiding Officer) with his appointment letter. The polling agent will be asked to paste this third copy on the pass/permit which is supplied to him by the Presiding Officer (vide para 4 of chapter VI of the Handbook for Presiding Officers) on the authority of which he remains present in the polling station or goes out or comes into the polling station. For this purpose, the passes/permits to be supplied to Presiding Officers for issue to polling agents should hereafter be of sufficiently big size so as to contain the photograph of the Polling agent.

(iv) at the end of the poll, the Presiding Officer will keep all the photographs, retained by him under (ii) above or which are not used for the reason that the persons concerned have not turned up as polling agents at the polling station, in a separate cover to be supplied for the purpose. He will keep this cover along with other non-statutory covers in packet-II (mentioned in para 3 of chapter XX of the Handbook for Presiding Officers) to be deposited with the Returning Officer as part of the election record of the polling station.

3. In the case of counting agents, the Commission has directed that photographs of counting agents should be submitted by 17.00 hours on the day three days prior to the date fixed for the commencement of counting. However, in the case of polling agents, keeping in view the diversity of the situation in the field, the Commission has left it to the discretion of the Returning Officer to fix the time before which the photographs should be submitted by the candidates, depending upon the date of departure of the polling parties for their respective polling stations making allowance for the distance, mode of transport etc.

4. The Commission directs that wide publicity be given to these instructions so that candidates are well informed of this procedure sufficiently in advance to make arrangements accordingly.

5. The receipt of this letter may kindly be acknowledged.



BACK TO INDEX I NEXT DOCUMENT I BACK TO SEARCH I