Election Day experience

On 30 April, 2009 it was the Election Day in Mumbai. And like every responsible and positive minded citizen, with my family for company I left home at around 12:35 pm to cast my vote. It was piping hot out. All shops remained closed during elections.

Soon after, we were close to our polling booth, where I saw army men on duty and little more closer to the booth there were a few police men. It left me pretty impressed with the security, wonder if such security is provided even in areas like UP, Bihar.

At the gate, I saw the queue of voters and got little uncomfortable with the thought of standing in that queue in the scorching sun. 45 minutes in the queue I saw and understood the following few things…

A handicapped guy was not let to vote due to lack of a photo identity. For all those who didn’t know, with the address proof you also need to have one photo identity. If you are going with your family at least one person in the family needs to have a photo identity.

Senior citizen need not stand in the queue.

Now something interesting… one young girl with her mom was so excited about voting. Showing her middle finger (that’s where they put the black ink this time…. wonder why?), she said “I am going to show this to all my friends, losers none of them went for voting”. We can definitely do with more people like her.

According to the news agencies, in Mumbai only 45% voted which I agree is not such a good figure however, I personally know minimum 7 people who submitted all the necessary documents much in advance but didn’t have their names in the voters list. And another 7 who had booked their tickets for the annual holiday 2/3 months back. In both the cases, it was not possible for the citizens to do much!!

I finally put my vote at around 1:30pm and felt ecstatic through out the day. This was not the first time I have voted but after all that our country went through and is still going through, after exercising my right… I thought I did my bit in improving the situation.