While 48 % of Pune's voters chose to waste their vote, Team MiD DAY met those who are still fighting for their right
While 48 % of Pune's voters chose to waste their vote, Team MiD DAY met those who are still fighting for their right
Eunuchs
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Even as Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, a eunuch, moved the Maharashtra Human Rights Commission demanding that the right to vote be extended to eunuchs and transgenders as a community, nearly 70 per cent of them had to stay away from yesterday's polls due to lack of proper documentation.
"Hardly 20-30 per cent of them voted, as most have not received voter ID cards. Since we have no documentation like ration cards, or other acceptable photo IDs, the voter cards are a must. Even the documentation we have is conflicting. For instance, our birth certificates mention us as male, but eunuchs usually dress as women and go with feminine names. Since there isn't a third choice, many stay away," said eunuch Daljeet Singh, member of NGO Aadhar that works in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. Daljeet was one of the few from the community who did manage to cast vote.
Sex workers
Despite living in the city for more than 15 years, sex workers are denied the right to vote, as proof of residence is difficult to come by for them. NGOs helping these women to procure voter ID cards said the unfriendly attitude of the official machinery had effectively cast them out of the poll process.
Tejaswi Sevekar, director at Saheli, a collective of sex workers, said barely 600 to 700 of them had been given voter cards. "The process is so tedious and unfriendly, it demoralises them," she said.
Minakshi Navale, a social worker working with the Vanchit Vikas NGO, told MiD DAY, "Around 400 sex workers registered their votes for the first time this year. Some were able to cast their votes with help of ration cards, while some others received voter cards. But the fact is, in the end, only less than one-fifth of their population was able to exercise their right to franchise."
Cops
In the past 15 years, this policeman hasn't missed a single election. Every time, he has religiously stood guard outside a polling centre, sometimes for nearly 40 hours at a stretch. He, however, has been unable to vote in a single one of those elections.
"There is an option of casting votes by ballot, but with the pre-poll duties and drills, it's just impossible to collect the papers. We are stuck at our respective locations until after the elections," said a constable at Lohia Nagar, requesting anonymity.
In Pune, 5,000 cops are posted on election duty, but only 15 per cent of them cast their votes in the previous Lok Sabha elections.
Ravindra Sengaonkar, DCP, Special Branch, Pune Police, said, "For the Assembly elections, the cops on duty covered 3,158 polling booths. We distributed these papers in all 28 police stations, which reach 110 chowkies in the city. We have a fairly effective network of ensuring every policeman casts his vote after the polling day."
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