Heat and missing names hurt Tamil Nadu voters
In a largely incident-free polling, close to 65 per cent of almost 60 million voters of Tamil Nadu exercised their voting rights on Thursday for its 38 parliament constituencies and 18 assembly constituencies.
However, there were widespread allegations of deliberate omissions of voters from the electoral roll, especially in the Kanyakumari constituency. Many voters, who reached the polling stations in the simmering heat, had to return without voting as their names were not seen in the list.
Outside a polling booth at St Mary’s Higher Secondary School in Kanyakumari, a car stopped near me. “Are you from media, sir,” a man looked out of the window and asked.
“Here, lots of voters lost their voting rights because their names have been deleted from the electoral roll. Can you do something?”
he asked after introducing himself as Rizwan.
Kanyakumari sees a tough fight between central minister Pon Radhakrishnan and Congress’s Vasanthakumar.
In another booth in Kanyakumari town, three women were frantically searching the voters’ list to find their names. “In my family, there are five voters. Two of them are in the list, but our names are not there,” said Justina.
In Thoothukkudy constituency, where deceased DMK leader M. Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi is contesting against BJP state president Tamilisai Soundarrajan, Sivalimga Perumal, a Dubai resident who came on vacation to exercise his voting right, was standing confused.
“I voted in every previous election. This time as I came to vote today, I found that my name has been deleted from the list. I don’t know what happened,” he said.
Across the state, opposition alliance including the DMK, Congress and left parties have been alleging that the election commission behaved in a partisan way.
DMK chief MK Stalin accused the poll body of maligning the name of his party and colluding with the government for “murder of democracy”.
Voters’ issues varied from constituency to constituency, but across the state, the mood remains in favour of the DMK-led alliance.
In Thoothukkudi, many voters said the election is an opportunity to vote against the state and central governments which caused a police firing that killed at least 14 people while protesting against the expansion of Sterlite Copper, a major pollutant in the area.
“We are angry that the government killed our people for a private company. Our protest became fruitful only after the death of our people. Our vote is against those who caused the entire incident,” said Thankaraj, a resident near the factory.
In other areas of the state, voters raised issues like lack of fair pricing for agricultural produce, water scarcity, joblessness caused by demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax introduced by the central government.
Ravi, DMK leader A. Raja’s secretary, told Khaleej Times that the main reason behind the party’s confidence is the voters’ anger against the Modi government and its negligence towards the sentiments of Tamil people.
“In addition to this, the split in the AIADMK and groupism in their party between Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami and deputy chief minister O. Panneerselvam will also work in our advantage.”
Muthulimgam, an AIADMK leader in Kanyakumari, said though the party wouldn’t be having a clean sweep, like the one they had in the 2014 polls, it would emerge victorious in close to 20 constituencies. “Everything is in the voters’ hands. We hope to have a comfortable majority here in Kanyakumari.”
Early morning till 10am witnessed heavy turnout of voters, but the voting slowed down after 10am, mainly because of the scorching heat. After 3pm, the polling became stronger and continued the same till 6pm.
In a few constituencies, glitches in the voting machines affected the polling. But unlike in the first phase of polls in Andhra Pradesh, those were repaired immediately and voting continued smoothly.