Asif Iqbal Naik
Kishtwar
It is not only people of Jammu and Kashmir who have deep imprints of last twenty five years of blood shed and conflict, Election Commission authorities seem no exception. In order to guide voters about the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM), what came as surprise was picture of hand grenade as an election symbol of a dummy candidate.
As per the photographs available with Kashmir Life, the dummy ballot paper at serial number 16 in English shows picture of Hand grenade in front of Parveen Kumar (Dummy candidate). The postal ballots in Urdu and Hindi also showed the picture of Hand grenade and was pasted by the concerned District Election Officers in respective areas outside polling stations and also at prime locations across the state with the aim to guide the voters about electronic voting machine.
All this happened as it is believed that the officials of election department forget to cross check the dummy papers before supplying it to District Election Officers for vide circulation and publicity in respective jurisdiction. Even though the dummy ballot papers are issued on behalf of Chief Electoral Officer Jammu and Kashmir, However it was not clear that who had actually cleared the dummy ballot papers before it goes to press for printing.
It needs no mention that hand grenade has claimed many lives all along these years and continues to send shiver down the spine.
