Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar informed that Election Commission of India has started a Toll Free Call Centre at Shimla for the benefit of electors and other stake holders of Himachal Pradesh. He said that this Call Centre will be initially functional during office hours i.e. 10 AM to 5 PM on all working days and subsequently, it will be functional 24 x 7. He said that this Tall Free call centre has been made functional throughout the State of H.P. through all the service providers such as BSNL, Aircel, S.Tel, Airtel, Reliance, Vodaphone, Idea, Tata Indicom etc. It is also functional from other parts of the country including NCT, Delhi. BSNL is taking steps to make it functional from every part of the country. The Call Centre Toll Free Number is 1965 and this number can be accessed from within the State of H.P. -1965 (Landline and Mobile Phones), from outside the State of H.P. 0177-1965 (Landline and Mobile Phones).

This call centre service/facility can be utilized by the people to register any type of election related complaint pertaining to the State or raise a query such as the process of getting oneself registered as elector, deletion of names from the electoral rolls, any electoral malpractice during election, complaint or suggestion regarding the functioning of the office of the District Election Officers, Electoral Registration Officers, Booth level Officers or any other work related to the Election Department. The Call Centre may also be used to enquire about the services offered by the Election Department and the office of Chief Electoral Officer, H.P.

He said that at the time of registering the queries and complaints in the call centre, care may be taken to disclose the name, address and mobile number, if available of the complainant. This will help the department to process the request faster. The people who disclose their mobile numbers at the time of giving their request/complaint will be given a registration number through SMS for tracking of the progress on the complaint, he added.

Public can also lodge their complaints through Internet by clicking on the link “Public Grievance Redress related to Elections’ on the official website of the Chief Electoral Officer, H.P.