‘Our administration has gone all out to ensure maximum voter outreach’: Pune DC Suhas Diwase

What are the unique initiatives the administration has taken to encourage voting for Assembly polls?

We have set up 126 polling stations at 60 cooperative housing societies. This is part of the initiative of creating more polling booths and ensuring that voters can easily access them. We have involved the chairman and office bearers of the societies and declared them as voter assistants. Around 6000 auditors of cooperative housing societies have been involved in this exercise of sanitization of the voters list.
There are six zones of the cooperation department. They helped us to identify the voters in the societies who had moved away. Voter distribution slips earlier were issued three days before the polls. This time, we have requested the EC to allow us to issue the slips at least 10 days in advance.We will include the housing society members to issue the distribution slips. Also, specific care has been taken to ensure adequate number of voters per polling station.

What is the ‘know your polling station’ drive? What steps are you taking to increase women’s participation in voting?

We will introduce the drive from October 22. We want to encourage maximum voter participation and hence are utilising all communication channels — be it social media, SVEEP activities, going to self-help groups, Accredited Social Health Activities, anganwadis, schools and colleges, vegetable markets, adivasi paadas and even aaji aajoba matdana chala, tai vaini matdanla chala (let’s go for voting). These are drives to ensure women go out and vote.

Pardah nasheen booths are being set up, especially in the Cantonment areas. We want to ensure they do not shy away from voting because of their cultural norms. Women from the Muslim community who traditionally wear the burqa are encouraged to vote at these booths. Theme-based polling stations, those for women are also being set up.

Pune has reported a good rise in the number of transgender voters. Tell us about the drive and how have you tapped the community?

By the last count, Pune has 794 transgender voters. We have appointed Prerna Waghela as our icon for the same. Our aim was to reach them and ensure they exercise their voting rights.

During the Lok Sabha polls, there were complaints of missing names. Also there were cases of some voter ID cards which were not accepted. How have you tackled those issues?

During Lok Sabha polls, we were told of large-scale deletion of names, which were unsubstantiated claims. Whenever we got cases of missing names, we immediately got them to fill Form 6 and thus we had around 60,000 such registrations on the spot. From August, we have registered around 1.20 lakh new voters to the list. The activity is still going on and we are going all out to ensure no one is missed out.

During the Lok Sabha polls one of the branches of the Pune District Central Cooperative Bank (PDCC)was pulled up for operating beyond its operating hours. Opposition candidates had raised objections to this. What steps are being taken to avoid the same this time?

During the Lok Sabha elections, one of the branches of the PDCC was open beyond its operational hours- but the fact was that one of the directors had his own office there and the branch in question had only one entrance. We had immediately filed an FIR and investigations are still on against the director. While no evidence of wrongdoing was found, action was taken as per law. This time we have issued strong guidelines to avoid any such incidents.

All banks and financial institutions are part of the Election Seizure Management System (ESMS). This is a norm for all elections and allows the commission to monitor financial transactions.

The Congress has alleged that ration shops are distributing Diwali kits which have the pictures of the CM and the Deputy CMs. What is your reaction to that?

In our area, more than 99 per cent of the ration kits have already been distributed. We knew that the elections were round the corner so we had already done the distribution. Whatever little was left was accounted for – they will be distributed without the pictures of the political personalities. We have taken enough care to adhere to the Model Code of Conduct.