The railway employees in Tamil Nadu have lost their right to cast votes through postal ballots during this year’s Lok Sabha polls because Southern Railway had made a request for extending the facility of postal ballot wrongly to Chennai Collector instead of sending the communication to Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).
Appearing before Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice J. Sathya Narayana Prasad, ECI counsel Niranjan Rajagopalan said, the CEO had written to various central government organisations on February 5 and wanted to know whether their employees should be extended with the postal ballot facility.
The letter was sent to the General Manager of Southern Railway too insisting upon a reply on or before February 10, 2024. Since there was no response, the CEO sent a reminder on February 16, 2024 asking Southern Railway and a few other entities to respond to his .communication on or before February 20, 2024.
