The Election Commission has decided to issue voter's slip to the electorate itself than allowing the political parties to distribute it so as to check the menace of wide-scale proxy voting in Nagaland during the February 26 assembly election.
The voter's slip was introduced in the last assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir, and Nagaland is the second state in the country where the Election Commission is issuing this document to the head of each family before the polls.
The EC has set the process for the distribution of the slips at all the district offices with the help of village councils and statutory grassroots-level organisations, official sources said in Kohima on Saturday.
At Dimapur, comprising five assembly segments, around 2,000 personnel have been deployed to distribute the voter's slips among the family heads of over 1,62,000 voters.
Dimapur Deputy Commissioner Sanjay Kumar, who is also the Returning Officer for the polls, admitted that he had received complaints that many of the voters were yet to receive the voter's slips or that their cards had been snatched away by others.
Possession of voter's slip has been made a must for exercising the right to franchise.
Meanwhile, security measures have been stepped up in all those polling stations, which have earned the dubious distinction of proxy voting during the previous elections. The pockets known for proxy voting are largely concentrated in Mokokchung, Zunheboto and Dimapur districts, the sources added.
