VOTING EXPERIENCE

Yesterday was civic poll in West Bengal. As it is my 2nd vote, I was quite excited about this civic poll. I established my democratic right for the 1st time in the Loksabha vote, 2009. :-)

Though after this massacre at Jhargram, I was very upset with our political parties. None of them; may it be Rail ministry, State govt. , or Central govt. ; accepted their own negligence to provide the chance for this sabotage. Rather everybody is busy to find out others' fault. From my point of view, I find all of them responsible for this massacre. May be not directly but their negligence and attitude towards the Maoists were responsible. So it was too hard to support any of these hypocrites.

Still I believe, as a responsible citizen, all of us should participate in vote. So at around 11 me and mom reached our polling booth at ward No. 4. The weather was so humid and unbearable. Perhaps that's why people choose early morning and there was no queue at the booth. Only 6-7 voters were there. As I entered the allotted room, I showed my voter id card and part number to the polling agent. Then I reached another agent with a register where voters would have to sign. He suddenly asked me to put my thumb impression on the register. As I am not quite familiar with all these details, I thought, thumb impression is also mandatory with signature. I asked him where to sign. He replied, "You are done, Madam". "But I want to sign. I am not illiterate, then why are you supposed to submit my thumb impression only?" He gave me an awful look!

Another agent was there (with an ink pot to mark on voters' fingers) saying,"Hey, let her sign. New voter, New excitement!!". Then he smiled to me and said,"actually Madam, there are many voters. So we need to hurry up. That's why...."

I signed on the register and smiled back to him and replied, "Yes. New voter, new excitement!!"