The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Physically challenged voters were in for surprises, shocks

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Thursday, May 14, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Physically challenged voters were in for surprises, shocks

Ramya Kannan

Majority agree thought of going disabled-friendly is appreciable

— Photo: R. Ravindran

HELPING HAND: Pavithra from Vidya Sagar being assisted on a highly elevated makeshift ramp for casting her vote at a polling booth at T Nagar in Chennai on Wednesday.

CHENNAI: If May 13 was a sort of dipstick to see how disabled-friendly Indian elections could get, the State evened out the minuses with some pluses and made it seem as if a good beginning had indeed been made.

As for disabled voters casting their votes during the first-ever “disabled-friendly” Lok Sabha polls, there were some pleasant surprises and some rude shocks. The majority, however, agreed that the thought of going disabled-friendly itself was appreciable, adding the rider that they wished everyone had taken it seriously.

In Chennai, a team of members from the Disability Legislation Unit (DLU) of Vidya Sagar conducted an access audit on the day of the poll.

While temporary ramps had been put up in some places in the city’s three constituencies, the complaint was that they were not up to the mark. Steep, rickety wooden slopes with no railings were found in some areas, which not just the disabled, but also the elderly found difficult to navigate.

There were some examples of good work, as in the Rani Meyyammai School booth in Gandhi Nagar, but there were also places like the Samarao Primary School, Triplicane where there were a small flight of stairs that one had to negotiate, without any provision for ramps. In some booths, including the Avvai Home booth in Adyar and Karnataka Sangha School in T.Nagar, policemen refused to let the disabled take their vehicles close to the booths, as a result of which some disabled voters had to be carried up, according to Deepak of the DLU.

In the rest of the State too, the situation was similar. Ramps put up in place in polling booths in Perambalur and Chidambaram (Reserved), Thanjavur and Nagapattinam Lok Sabha constituencies proved to be useful.

But in Coimbatore city, disabled persons made their way up to booth with difficulty, determined to cast their vote. In the suburbs, the situation was even worse. Some, like 86-year-old Sivakami in Selvapuram, said it was the presence of a ramp that helped them cast the vote.

In some places, the lack of guidance made things difficult for the old and disabled. For instance, a man at Good Shepherd School on Vincent Road in the city had to be helped to reach a booth even though there was a ramp at the far end of the corridor. The ramp was not visible to the voter as it was in a corner behind another structure. But, neither the police nor the polling staff pointed out the ramp.

In Kancheepuram, voters said ramps existed in most of the polling stations in the district as efforts had already been made during the last Assembly elections to make them disabled-friendly.

While representatives of visually impaired people continued to take up the cry for voice vote, V.Sivaraman, a professor at Presidency College at Chennai, said he had absolutely no difficulty in casting the vote.

But since the Braille was only in English, a number of people who were not conversant with English Braille could not use the EVM’s without assistance, he pointed out.

There were a number of lessons that the Election Commission could derive from the conduct of the elections on May 13, disability rights activists said. If these lessons are translated to action the next time around, the disabled can cast their votes independently and with dignity, they added.

(With inputs from S.Vydhianathan, Deepa H. Ramakrishnan, K.V.Prasad, R. Krishnamoorthy and G. Srinivasan)

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