20 Thousand Army personnel Denied Right to Vote

As published in Daily News & Analysis, more than 20,000 serving army personnel in Pune city have been deprived of their right to vote, though an Army order issued in 1995 to this effect has been backed by both the election commission and the Supreme Court. According to this provision, defence service employees are entitled to vote wherever they go with the help of a specific document signed by the local defence authority.


The Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement (IESM) and Justice For Jawan, who have been jointly fighting for the franchise of servicemen, have brought the topic to the fore again on the eve of the civic elections. They have demanded that the serving personnel in Pune be permitted to cast their votes. The demand has been made by Commander (retd) RW Pathak, convenor of IESM and Col (retd) Suresh Patil of Justice For Jawan.


Colonel Abhijit Mitra, the public relations officer for Southern Command said, “The option of postal ballot is available for serving defence personnel and I have used it previously, but I cannot say anything right now. IESM had moved a query under the Right To Information (RTI) Act in this regard and the Southern Command has sent a reply to it.”


When asked about details of the reply given to the IESM, Pathak said “The Southern Command has just written to us that the query has been forwarded to army headquarters.” The Southern Command has not taken any stand on the issue and has forwarded the matter to the Army headquarters (HQ).


Pathak said the city has 20,000 people in defence service. “The IESM recently met the suburban commander of the city and submitted a memorandum to make provisions to allow serving officers to cast their votes. Our officers want to vote in the municipal, MLA and MP elections scheduled in the next two-three years,” he added.


He explained that the responsibility for this rested with the secretary of defence and since Pune has many defence institutes such as the National Defence Academy (NDA), College of Military Engineering (CME), Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Southern Command, Bombay Engineering Group (BEG) and Signal Regiment and Infantry Brigade that have a total vote bank of 20,000 that should be used.


The IESM and Justice For Jawan had filed a RTI query with the Southern Command on December 28 to ascertain reasons for failure to implement the order, but the query was forwarded by the Southern Command to the Army headquarters and till January 27, there has been no response from any office about the RTI query. via DNA