The Election Commission has received almost 4,500 applications from displaced voters in Mannar who are accommodated in the Puttalam district. The Commission will set up special polling booths in Puttalam for the purpose.
The Commission will decide on the number of polling booths to be set up at the upcoming weekly meeting on June 30, an officer at the Election Commission told the Sunday Observer. Apart from this issue, extending the voting time and increasing the number of polling booths to facilitate Covid-19 health regulations will be discussed at the meeting, he said.
Official sources said around 10,000 IDPs are living in the Puttalam district. The Election Commission has called for applications from those who wish to vote in their present district as transport had become a major issue at the last election. Four thousand five hundred have applied while others have registered to vote in Mannar.
At the last 2019 Presidential election, buses transporting hundreds of displaced people were attacked by gunfire and stones. A CID investigation against former Minister Mangala Samaraweera and former Minister Rishad Badurdeen are under way for allegedly misusing state property by using SLTB buses to visit polling stations to Mannar from the Puttalam district.