Mumbai: Hundreds of voters were left wandering from one polling centre to another in the sweltering heat as their names could not be found in the voter lists. While some found their names after a long search, many had to give up on exercising their right.
Fr. Warner D’souza, director of the Archdiocesan Heritage Museum, has been voting at the St. Pius Seminary in Goregaon for 27 years. On Tuesday, however, after spending hours to locate his name, he was unable to vote. “Till the end, I could not find my name in the list. I went to a few nearby booths as well. When I approached the polling officer, he was completely clueless and he told me there was no mechanism to help me,” Fr D’souza said
He added that it was very upsetting to miss out on voting for the first time ever. “It seems they have simply deleted my name. The government is spending so much on advertisements publicising their achievements. The least they could have done is given out advertisements to encourage voters to check their names in the lists six months ago, and if there were problems, they could have been sorted out in time,” he said.
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A mother and daughter from Versova faced similar difficulties after their names were not found. “My brother and sister-in-law found their names in the polling centre, but ours were missing,” said Izu Akhtari, a teacher by profession. Ms. Akhtari’s mother, Najrun, said the entire family has been voting in the centre at Gyan Kendra School in Versova for the past 20 years. Jagjit Singh Chawla, an 87-year-old resident of the same area, also failed to find his name in the school’s voting booth. “I cannot physically go and check everywhere. So I have sent a young boy I know to check for me,” Mr. Chawla said.
Residents from Borivali (East) complained that last-minute swaps in the four major polling booths in the area — CTRC Training Institute, Chougle High School, Cosmos School and Mahindra Society — led to a lot of confusion.