Voter turnout
As a young Indian, I was excited about the election but I did not go to the polling booth, first because I am visually impaired and I have heard from my peers that there is no privacy for people like us. Braille EVMs exist only in name. Secondly, a host of families from my neighbourhood came back frustrated as their names were missing from the voter lists.
Is the Election Commission aware that names go missing from the voter lists; houses are wiped off the map; people who are alive are declared dead; and the religion and even the gender of many people have been changed?
Shadab Husain,
Lucknow
http://www.hindu.com:80/2009/05/05/stories/2009050555310803.htm
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3 comments:
shadab, even if u would have gone for voting u wouldnt havee made any difference because u r a bloody fool.thank u that u saved the ink.dont think ur letters r very good.there are many people like u roaming on the roads.u r one of them.the only difernce is that u r worce!idiot.
You should have believed your own first-hand experience and not on the heresay of your so-called peers. It is true that the facilities of Braille EVMs and Braille ballot paper have yet to be implemented properly and extended throughout the nation, the fact remains that, in a lot of places (in cities at least), they have been provided with appropriate arrangements and many visually impaired people have voted with their due privacy. You have only strengthened those who feel that no such facilities should be provided to the visually challenged by not going to vote and by not testing the implementation of Braille EVMS.
As for missing names of people, again you have rather strengthened those who indulge in such undemocratic and quasi-violent activities. A better approach in such matters could have been to shatter your complacency, come out to vote and protest wherever such things come to your way of democratic participation.
A lot of visually challenged people have voted with the help of Braille EVMs and Braille Ballot paper in many parts of the country. You should have checked twice or even thrice before declaring in public that Braille EVMs are there only in names. True that the implementation of such facilities is not completely satisfactory. But, by not going to vote and by not testing these facilities in your part of the nation, you have only strengthened those who feel that such facilities should not be provided to the visually impaired or should be provided only as a sort of a tocon gesture.
As for the missing names of people and other undemocratic and violent activities you have rightly mentioned, again it is the complacency of people like you who have given the sectarian, communal, fundamentalist and militant nationalist forces a chance to exist and freely indulge in such activities. It is only a collective effort on the part of all of us that can battle such forces.
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