First-time voters, elderly duo from US vote in Gzb
Suresh Gupta, 80, and his wife Saroj Gupta, 74, walked hand-in-hand to the polling booth near their house in Hindon Heights in Vaishali’s Sector 4, around 7.30am on Friday. Having recently returned from Chicago, US, especially to vote in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the couple was overjoyed to exercise their franchise.
Gupta said he missed being able to vote in the local body polls in 2023 and also in the 2022 assembly elections. So they were determined not to miss the Lok Sabha polls and flew to Ghaziabad in advance to be here on voting day.
“We live with our son in Chicago and now we are green card holders. As we could not vote in the last two elections, we felt dejected and we were apprehensive about missing this one too. My children also do not allow us to move out frequently owing to our advanced years. But we were determined this time that we will fly to India and exercise our voting right,” said the octogenarian.
“We arrived in Ghaziabad earlier this week and were excited to step out around 7.30am on Friday to reach our nearest polling booth. The election staff were very cordial and they allowed us to vote ahead of others, on account of us being senior citizens,” Gupta said.
According to district election office, the Ghaziabad parliamentary constituency this time has 2,941,624 voters, which include 1,320,104 women voters, 33,921 first time voters (aged 18-19), 15,825 voters with disabilities and 12,622 voters aged 85 years and above.
Although the voter turnout was low this time --- Ghaziabad registered a polling of 49.65% till 10pm Friday -- many first timers made sure to vote.
Ananya Sharma, 19, a medicine aspirant, woke up at 6.30am and reached the polling booth in Mahendra Enclave on Friday.
“I was the second person to vote here. I was excited since Thursday night and talked to my father about the voting process. My brother is studying for Btech from Kanpur and he is also a first timer. But he could not come. So, I was the only first time voter in my family. I took a selfie outside to commemorate the occasion,” she said.
Another first-timer Kriti Ranjan, 19, who resides in Sky Tech 2 in Crossings Republik, said she woke up early to be among the first persons to reach the booth.
“I am voting to enhance the prospects of my country. When it comes to development, I saw the construction of the Delhi Meerut Expressway and how it changed lives. My daily travel to my school in Vasundhara used to take about 90 minutes and the DME reduced it to about 30 minutes,” Ranjan said.
In Ghaziabad, as many as 455 of the 480 voters, identified with disabilities (with 40% benchmark disability) or those aged 85+, have already voted under the newly introduced “vote from home” drive of the election commission, carried out from April 16-20.
Politicians also made a beeline for booths and prominent among them were incumbent Ghaziabad MP gen VK Singh (retired). He voted in Raj Nagar on Friday morning.
This was his second public appearance in recent times -the first being the roadshow he attended alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 6 in Ghaziabad.
Singh, who won two consecutive times in 2014 and 2019, was denied ticket this time by the Bharatiya Janata Party which opted to field sitting MLA Atul Garg.
After voting, Singh said, “In between I was in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and I returned from Palamu yesterday. So, the party keeps sending me for work to different places. We also expect to do better in south India these elections.”