On Sunday afternoon, 20 people took a boat ride from Arnala beach to Arnala Island, home to 3,500 people, a Portuguese fort and temple.
While residents of the island have no option but for the 5-km boat ride, this boat journey was different. It carried electronic voting machines, voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines and election officials.
The island, which contains the fort, originally named Ilhas Das Vacas, is around 70 km from Mumbai and 5 km off the coast. The 1,771 voters of this island will cast their votes along with Mumbai on April 29.
Manohar Kedare, who has been the Zonal Electoral Officer of the area for both the 2014 general elections and the State elections, said residents of the island, mostly fisherfolk, have always come out enthusiastically to vote. “Not many people here are educated, but they make it a point to vote in the hope that it brings development to their little village,” Mr. Kedare said.
Nevertheless, the residents do have bones to pick with the powers that be. Shaila Vaiti, a homemaker, said years of fighting for an English-medium school in the village had borne no fruit. “There is a Marathi-medium school till Class VII. Children later start travelling to schools in Arnala but as their primary education is in Marathi they cannot attend English-medium schools,” she said.
Fisherman Chandrakant Vaidi said providing good education to children in the village is exhausting for parents as well as children.
“Children can’t board the boat and go to the mainland alone. Women accompany children to school every day, spend their entire day in Arnala and bring the children back home after school. Only after the children turn 13 to 14 years old do they start travelling alone,” he said.
Kashinath Yashwant Vaidi, an elderly man who has seen the village slowly develop over the years, said the villagers got electricity after a long fight in 2002. “Our demand for a bridge is falling on deaf ears and it’s in our destiny to wait for several years to get basic facilities,” he said.
The residents have also been asking for a bridge connecting them to the mainland. Poonam Dhanu, who travels to the mainland to sell fish every day, said the absence of a hospital in the village brings along its own set of troubles.
“There are times when women go into labour in the middle of the night and we have to carry them to the mainland in boats. We have a mid-wife who does help women conceive in the village, but in case of emergencies, people have a tough time crossing the sea and making it to hospital,” she said.
However, the enthusiasm of the people and their readiness to cast vote overpowers the problems they face.
Ranjana Mankar, an election duty officer who visited the island for the first time on Sunday, said that she has been on election duty on many occasions, but had never been to a place as remote as the Arnala fort island.
“There are hundreds of people on election duty but we are the only ones who will be going to the polling station by boat. It’s astonishing to see that in spite of people having lived here for years together, there is no bridge connecting the island to Arnala,” Brinal Rodriguez, an election duty officer said.
In another area close to Mumbai, a different polling team took boats to reach an island in Palghar district, called Panju. Situated in the Vasai Creek , Panju island has a population of 1,358 with 1,096 voters. The island has a primary school and a primary healthcare centre, with ferries being the only connecting link between the mainland and the island.
District Collector of Palghar Prashant Narnavre said there are 2,170 polling booths in the district. “Altogether 13,000 personnel, 4,000 policemen, State Reserve and Central Reserve Police Force personnel along with the Rapid Action Force in case of disruption are all set for the election,” he said.
Mr. Narnavre said Boisar constituency in the district will witness a unique polling booth, which specially-abled people will manage. “There will be six Sakhi booths across the district managed solely by women,” Mr. Narnavre said. Interestingly, the boats that will ferry the polling teams are named “M.S. Swapnapurti” (fulfilment of a dream).
Hopefully, their dreams will bear fruit soon.
