The Hindu : New Delhi News : A new dawn in North-East DELhi assembly elections 2008

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A new dawn in North-East DELhi assembly elections 2008

Manisha Jha

NEW DELHI: For 84-year old Rajrani Mehta, who has been weeping while watching TV images of the terror attacks in Mumbai, her vote is her way of supporting a cause to end terrorism.

Unable to hear properly due to her age, Ms. Mehta standing outside a polling station in Rohtas Nagar on Saturday still managed to say: “I do not believe in allowing my vote to go waste. If I don’t vote, there is no point to my living. I want an end to the problem of terrorism in our country and have cast my vote with this in mind.”

Just a few kilometres away in Babarpur which saw a voter turnout of 6 per cent in booth 126 by 10 p.m., 50-year-old Chander Gupta, who was paralysed a few years ago, did not let that deter him from casting his vote on Saturday. “I stay in Gorakh Park which is not too far from here but still very far from me. Our responsibility does not end after pressing the button on the voting machine; instead it begins. Being an Indian I cannot reach Manmohan Singh but I can reach the MLA so I feel voting is our national duty which everyone must follow.”

Yet another inspiring story was that of 22-year-old physically challenged Mohammad Junaid who gives tuitions to school children and turned up to vote spiritedly at a polling booth in Seemapuri which had witnessed a voter turnout of 31 per cent by 1 p.m. Wheeled in by his own student on a wheelchair, Mr. Junaid said: “I have decided not to vote for someone who doesn’t give a patient hearing to the woes of the poor and neglects them. I hope my vote helps in bringing such a government to power that provides help to physically challenged and orphaned people like me to become self-reliant as they have no one else to turn to.”

Offering her take on what motivated her to vote, 39-year-old Sunita Devi, who stood in the voters’ queue for over two hours at a polling booth in Rohtas Nagar, said she was voting to avoid having her name struck off the list of ration card holders. “If I do not vote, I would not be able to avail of the ration card and those people might think I have died,” she added half-seriously.

Complaining about the long wait, Sunita said: “The polling booths are so small and voters so many, which is why we have to wait for so long to cast our vote.”

Several voters at polling booths in Seemapuri such as No.89 complained about their names missing from the electoral rolls owing to last-minute communication received by the presiding officers regarding deletion and subsequent shifting of the names of several voters from their pre-prepared electoral lists to other polling stations.

Voter turn-out in several North-East Delhi constituencies seemed to have picked up by afternoon after several voters made their way to booths after battling the morning chill and dispensing with their routine household chores.

Security arrangements too differed according to the voter profile of each polling station and the “sensitivity” factor. So while some polling stations in Babarpur and Rohtas Nagar had an average strength of 15 police officers on duty, others such as those in Seemapuri boasted 35 police officers and additional arrangements such as barricades.

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