The first vote of the country for the 2019 General Elections has been cast in Arunachal Pradesh by service voters. A remote Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) unit located in the eastern tip of the north eastern state, has started the service voting through secret postal ballot at Lohitpur, Arunachal Pradesh, more than 2, 600 km away from New Delhi.
The first vote of the country was cast by DIG Sudhakar Natarajan, the head of ITBP’s Animal Training School.
Votes through postal ballots have been cast from Lohitpur for many constituencies in India. Ballot papers have been despatched to Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Bangalore, Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana, UP and several other places.
Other ITBP units deployed in the state also cast their votes through postal ballot.
This year, the Election Commission has taken many steps to add more and more service voters in the process. Awareness campaigns through electronic, social, print and other media was given due attention since last year.
This would probably for the first time that a large number of service voters count is expected.
There are about 30 lakh defence, paramilitary and other government employees registered as service voters. In many cases they are residing with families at their duty stations and will cast their votes through service voter facility.
