Karnataka - Bangalore   

Proxy voting upsets those whose votes were snatched

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

Impersonators: Proxy voters who were arrested in R.T. Nagar in Bangalore on Saturday.

BANGALORE: Even as scores of Bangloreans found their names missing from the electoral rolls, there were many others who could not vote as someone else already had done it on their behalf.

Despite stringent measures initiated by the Election Commission and the police, several cases of impersonation and attempts to cast bogus votes were reported. The R.T. Nagar police prevented a group of 40 that allegedly tried to indulge in proxy voting at booth number 31 in Hebbal constituency. The police took 21 of them into custody and are on the lookout for the rest who managed to escape.

The Mahalakshmi Layout police arrested a van driver who was allegedly transporting 15 people to a polling booth in Mariappanapalya to cast bogus votes.

One of the victims of proxy voting was Jyothsna P. Kalro who turned up at 1 p.m. at a polling station in Tasker Town in Shivajinagar only to be told she had already cast her vote. Thrusting her elector’s photo identity card at the presiding officer, she snapped, “How could you not check the photograph properly before allowing somebody to vote?”

Later she told The Hindu that “it is very disappointing to return home without voting as I had been waiting for this day”.

At Khadi Bhavan polling booth in K.R. Puram constituency, Zareen Bee and Alla Baksh also returned disappointed on being told that their votes had already been cast. In fact, Zareen had an argument with the officials, who expressed their helplessness.

Alla Baksh said, “I am not literate and have come with a bank pass book as a proof of photo identity. The officials are literates who could have tallied the photograph of the person with the name in the electoral roll.”

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