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Kalam queues up to vote

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI DEC. 1. The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, was among the last to cast his vote at a polling booth in the Dr. Rajendra Prasad Senior Secondary School inside the Presidential Estate here today.

Mr. Kalam came to the booth around 4.45 p.m., stood in the queue like a common man, cast his ballot, came out and showed the ink mark on his finger to waiting mediapersons.

The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, accompanied by the Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, and her political secretary, Ahmed Patel, cast her vote early in the morning at a polling booth in the Nirman Bhawan. To a question, Ms. Gandhi said she was hoping for a good show by the Congress in all the four States.

Polling in the New Delhi parliamentary constituency, which comprises five segments, saw just two per cent of the electorate show up at most of the booths in the first two hours. While 20 or so of the 968 voters turned up at Nirman Bhawan, around 30 of the 964 voters had exercised their franchise in booths 18, 19 and 20 at an NDMC School in the Minto Road constituency till around 9.30 a.m.

However, after 10 a.m. more people began to troop into the polling booths. At St. Columbus School, some people found their names missing from the list and kept wandering from one booth to another. By 11 a.m., around 120 of the 637 votes were polled in booth 13, while 150 of the 1,200 voters had cast their votes in booth 57 at St. Columba's School. Around 20 per cent of voting was reported from almost all the booths till noon.

There was some confusion at the College of Art on Tilak Marg where Ms. Dikshit went around 10.30 a.m. to cast her vote. At booth 11, there were two Shielas in the list but no one with "Dikshit" as the surname, which apparently annoyed her. Soon, the Congress candidate from the Minto Road Assembly constituency, Tajdar Babar, arrived at the spot. As the news spread, the election staff and Ms. Dikshit's personal security guards rushed to other booths in the college to find out where she was supposed to vote. It took almost 15 minutes to confirm that her name was in the list at booth 14, following which she cast her vote.

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