Bus service to polling station for migrants in Jammu and Kashmir flagged off

The district election officer in Jammu and Kashmir flagged off a bus service on Wednesday to ferry migrants of the remote Reasi district to the polling station to exercise their right to vote after a long time.

Special buses from Jammu and Kashmir State Transport Corporation were roped in to ferry voters from over 900 migrant families to their respective polling stations.

Besides transport facilities, the Election Officer also arranged for the distribution of voter slips to the migrant voters in their camps.

Additional Deputy Commissioner of Reasi district, Rajinder Singh Tara, said that the initiative would enable the poor migrants who so far had no access to polling booths to cast their votes

"We have made arrangements for people living in the migrant camps for a long time to reach the polling booths to cast their votes. Before that, we also distributed voter slips in the migrant camps and made all arrangements to ensure that they are not deprived of their democratic rights and every person in the district is able to cast his vote," Tara said.

The elated migrants thanked the government for this initiative which seeks to empower the migrants with the basic democratic right irrespective of their financial condition.

A migrant, Savitri Devi voiced sentiments of the beneficiaries

"For the past fifteen years, the unemployed people in this place have not been able to cast their votes. But the government has finally started this transport service to let everybody visit the polling station to cast his vote," she said.

Reasi district homes a major population of migrant families to the state, most of whom escaped from remote villages following a reign of terror unleashed by armed insurgents during the 1990s.