Voter ID cards in Braille likely in Telangana

The Chief Electoral Office (CEO) of Telangana State is mulling issuing voter ID cards and voter slips in Braille to facilitate visually impaired persons to vote and ensure increase in their voting percentage.

According to the Disabled Welfare Department officials, there are about 56,000 visually-impaired voters in the State and taking advantage of the special enrolment drive, a few more eligible voters have submitted their applications for enrolment and today the number of differently-abled voters has reached 4.16 lakh in the State. 

Chief Electoral Officer Dr Rajat Kumar said, “We have been working on improving voting percentage among the differently-abled sections as most of them were



reluctant to cast their vote due to various reasons,” he said, adding that special arrangements were also being made for disabled persons at the polling booths.

Commissioner for Disabled Welfare B Sailaja told that they had procured a special machine for the printing of Braille material and it will be useful for printing of voter slips and voter ID cards for the visually impared. “We are ready to print Braille language voter slips and voter ID cards; we have procured special printing machine from Germany,” she said. Sailaja also said EVMs will also have Braille to facilitate visually impaired voters exercise their franchise which will help a lot to increase their voting percentage.