HYDERABAD: Does the Election Commission care for its theme of accessible elections? Pictures accessed by Express show that ramps installed in polling stations across 3 villages of the Husnabad constituency pose a risk to disabled voters instead of helping them.
Take the case of the polling station in Chigurumamidi village, set up in a plush 2 acre ZPHS school. Disabled voters there say that of the three ramps in the school, none have a railing to help them go up; plus, they are too steep to be accessed with ease. “These ramps were made before 2014 polls. We raised complaints but they were not fixed,” says E Rajashekhar Reddy, who is part of Network of Persons with Disability Organisation. This village has 20-50 disabled voters.
Conditions were worse in the nearby Mulkanoor village, where the school had just a temporary ramp made of mud which entirely inaccessible for a wheelchair-user. Pictures of the local Anganwadi school in Sitarampur, which will be the polling station for the area, show neither ramps nor handrails in sight. Villages of Siddipet, Nizamabad and Husanabad also had poor ramps.
As per GOI rules, every ramp must be at least 1800mm wide with a maximum gradient of 1:12 and must have double handrails. “They are not only unusable but can also cause us to injure ourselves,” Rajasekhar said.w