No Ink on My Finger

 

Since I got registered as a voter nearly a decade ago, I have been dutifully getting my fingers inked during every election. I have voted in two Lok Sabha, one assembly, and a couple of BBMP elections. 

Bengaluru has been notorious for voter apathy and every election it comes under fire for low percentages. While rest of Karnataka districts post 65-75 percent polling, Bengaluru huffs and puffs to cross the 50 percent mark and settles for a sub-55 percentage point.

Political pundits attack Bengalureans for not taking voting seriously and instead treating the day as a holiday to scoot off to nearby resorts or shopping malls. They pontificate - there is no point in cribbing afterwards for potholes, broken footpaths, traffic gridlocks, and flooding during rains. 

For me, the nearby school has remained the polling station during all the elections, and I have been casting my vote without much ado. Mostly I come across thin crowds outside polling booths and the process gets over in 15-20 minutes.

But this time, when I went to cast my vote for the assembly election, I was in for a rude shock. When I and my wife produced the electoral identity cards, the volunteers seated outside the polling booth began checking in their paper voters’ list. 

They managed to find my wife’s name and I was hoping mine must be next to it as used to be the case usually. But no such luck for me this time. They entered my ID code into their mobile phones and began checking. After some anxious moments, they too gave up saying the name has been ‘deleted’. 

I was nonplussed and could not process the information. My card changed many more hands among the volunteers and all of them keyed the number on their mobile phones, but the results were negative. They told me they have been witnessing quite a few similar cases and noted down my voter ID number.

As my wife proceeded to cast her vote I told the polling officer about my predicament. They too checked and I had a faint hope that as they are government officials their searches may be more advanced and they might stumble upon my name. But no happy ending. 

Being a long-time voter, I was complacent enough to think there was no need to check my name in the voters’ list in advance. 

A day later, I read in newspapers that after the alleged voter data theft by an NGO Chilume, the election commission had added and deleted many names, and officials said people should have been more alert.

Though I am not much of a fan of posting an inked finger selfie on social media, the inkless index finger does give me a sense of being left out.

Also Read: Random Jottings