Mysuru: The District Election Office has so far received over 570 applications from Government employees seeking exemption from poll duty on various grounds.

Speaking to Star of Mysore this morning, Deputy Commissioner Abhiram G. Sankar, who is also the Returning Officer of the District, said that the District Administration has deployed 12,853 officials for poll duty including 10 per cent reserved staff in 2,920 polling booths. The deployed officials are Government and semi-Government employees including Class I, Class II, Class III and Class IV employees, as per official records.

Of the total 12,853, 570 of them had sought exemption on illness, family function, pregnancy, breastfeeding, pre-booked foreign trips and other genuine grounds, he added.

He said the District Administration had kept the Drop Box facility and displayed a Notice  (see pic) at the reception counter in the entrance of DC Office gate after the announcement of code of conduct since Mar.10 to receive the applications from officials seeking exemption from poll duty.

As the day of receiving applications  ended yesterday, the DC Office removed the Drop Box today.

The Deputy Commissioner said that a Committee of Officials led by Assistant Returning Officer and Additional Deputy Commissioner G. Anuradha and Election Protocol Officer Naragund was constituted to verify these applications  for exemption.

This Committee has verified all the applications and around 500 officials may be exempted from poll duty. The Committee will exempt them after verifying their supporting documents like marriage invitation, family function and foreign trip travel tickets, medical certificates certified by District Health Officer’s Committee and other documents submitted by the Officials to prove their reasons seeking for exemption.                                          

Sankar said that the District Administration has surplus number of Government employees to meet the demands. The district requires about 12,300 employees as booth-level officers and as flying squad, static surveillance team, video surveillance team, video-viewing team and other works of election duty. The District Administration can manage the election process  with the available staff including reserved staff even if exemption is given to all these 570 officials who had applied in the district, he added.