Malda faces shortage of election staff

Statesman News Service

MALDA, May 9: The district administration is facing scarcity of staff to deploy for polling duty because of the new system of stationing a six member polling team at one polling station. At the same time, hundreds of people, mainly teachers, are trying to delete their names from election duty.Following an order by the state election commission, the district administration has requisitioned staff from even voluntary organisations to act as polling personnel, The staff of the electricity department have however been left alone. Even banks are being stripped of their staff for poll duty, although this has left many rural bank branches, where there are only two or three employees in any case, nearly paralysed.According to Mr Tushar Bhattacharya, chairman of District Cooperative Bank Ltd, said that bank branches at Manikchak, Samsi, Mothabari and Chanchal, apart from the evening branch of English Bazaar, all the staff were requisitioned for the election. “Only the manager and one female worker were exempted. But the function of the bank needs minimum three persons. Banking operation will suffer for at least four days. Our several requests to the administration did not yield any result,” Mr Bhattacharya said.In an additional headache for the district administration, large numbers of staff have sought exemption from electoral duty.Political leaders are in great demand from an unexpected quarter ~ and teachers, quasi-government personnel, all intent on escaping election duty. A secondary school teacher said, “For this election I became an active worker of Congress, at least on paper, as I don't want to go on poll duty.” It is learnt that about 1000 names have already been recommended by CPI (M) to the district administration for exemption of election duty.