DW BUREAU / shimla Chief Electoral Officer, (CEO) Maneesh Garg appealed to all those officials deployed on election duty and those in armed forces to post their postal ballots to their respective Returning Officers (ROs) at the earliest so that it can reach before 8 AM on 8th, December positively to be included in the counting process. He said that out of 59728 postal ballots issued to the officials deployed for election duty, 32177 postal ballots have been received by the concerned returning officers so far. Besides, out of 67559 postal ballots issued to the serving army personnel, 15099 postal ballots have been received by the returning officers in their office till date. He said that a web-application had been launched to keep day to day record of the postal ballots being received by the ROs and which was regularly being monitored by the election department as well. He said that officials on election duty were already issued postal ballots before proceeding on their poll duty and thereafter there was no such provision to issue the same. Apart from this, as per the directions of Election Commission of India, the postal ballots are to be sent only by post to the concerned ROs and no separate ballot boxes or collection centers/ postal booths are to set up for this. Apart from the above, the postal ballots of all those officials in the ambit of essential services who had applied for the same on Form 12-D, were sent to the nodal officers of their departments to be further sent to the ROs. The ROs had fixed three dates for such essential service officials to cast their vote on any one day in their respective assembly constituencies at polling booths separately set up for the purpose, i.e. for postal ballots. This facility was available for the first time in assembly elections 2022, which has been completed by 10th November. (editor@dailyworld.in)