Electronic Media Forum Assam (Emfa) has urged the election authority of India for proving the facility of postal ballots for the city based media persons during the forthcoming Assam Legislative Assembly election, scheduled for April 4 and 11 respectively.
The media forum argues that there are thousands of media employees including journalists in Guwahati, who works for the over 20 morning news dailies, about hundred periodicals, the five satellite news channels and the few entertainment electronic media outlets. However, most of these media employees living in Guwahati are non natives to the city and they have their voting rights in their home towns or in villages, from which they hail.
“There should be more than four thousand media employees along with their eligible family members who don’t have their names in the voters list of greater Guwahati. These people often miss the opportunity to exercise their voting right as they cannot leave the station on the poll-dates due to their crucial duties to cover the election and thus most of the valuable votes often go waste,” said a statement issued by the Emfa.
So the forum appeals to the chief election commissioner of India as well as the chief electoral officer of Assam to arrange postal voting facilities for the interested city based media persons along with their families. The Emfa clarifies that the centre for postal balloting and also the date & time for the same should be decided by the election authority, where the forum has no specific choice.
Issued by Nava Thakuria, Paragmoni Aditya, Bimal Ghosh and Bhaskar Bhuyan for Emfa
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