Other States - New Delhi   

Blitz in BJP bastion

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI DEC.1. Time 4-45 p.m. Booth Number 58 in the prestigious Moti Nagar Assembly constituency at Happy Senior Secondary School in Kirti Nagar, which is the home turf of the Bharatiya Janata Party's Chief Ministerial candidate, Madan Lal Khurana. The young Congress candidate from here, Alka Lamba, enters this booth with her polling agents. She complains to the Presiding Officer that bogus votes were being polled, which is strongly objected to by the BJP workers. Suddenly at 4-50 p.m, two well-built men enter the polling booth and move towards Alka and she runs away for cover. Two party workers come to protect her, but the two men catch them by the scruff and beat them up; all under the nose of the police. The entire room is vandalised and polling materials thrown around. In the melee, the Presiding Officer holds on to the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM).

Though voting is stopped, even the police fail to bring the situation under control. About a dozen odd voters who arrive at the booth before the deadline of 5 p.m. are allowed to cast their vote at 5-10 p.m. Alka again objects to it. As tension builds up, the police convince Alka and her supporters to leave. As she leaves the premises under police cover, she was heckled by the BJP supporters who raise slogans against her.

Tension was palpable at many polling booths in the Moti Nagar Assembly constituency, where moderate to brisk polling was witnessed today. At booth no. 58, as many as 628 of the 12,043 votes were polled by 4-50 p.m. At the conclusion of polling, 550 of the 967 votes were polled in booth no. 59.

Barring this, polling went on peacefully at the rest of the four Assembly segments of the Sadar Bazaar parliamentary constituency - Timarpur, Model Town, Kamla Nagar and Sadar Bazaar. Considered to be a BJP stronghold, at a large number of booths people could be seen even after 5 p.m. "All those, who entered the polling booths were allowed to caste their vote,'' said the Returning Officer of Model Town.

Though there was a low turnout in the morning, people particularly women began coming out in large numbers in the afternoon. "We finished our work first, then came out to vote,'' said Manisha Singh at a polling booth in Kamla Nagar.

However, many young voters like Akhilesh Kumar at Timarpur, exercised their vote for the first time today. "It is the curiosity of the EVMs that brought me here. Otherwise none of these candidates deserve to get a chance,'' he said. At the same time, senior citizens like Devi Dayal (70) came along with his grandsons to a polling booth in Timarpur.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Other States

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• Blitz in BJP bastion
• A quiet day at silver street
• Rural folks keep EVMs ticking

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu