HYDERABAD: At 5:30 pm, just minutes before the polling booths were closed in Secunderabad Cantonment, an elderly woman was seen entering a government school in a wheelchair, assisted by a polling volunteer.
Wearing a white T-shirt with the ECI logo and a temporary identity card that declared him as a ‘volunteer on pull duty’, the youngster helped the voter reach the EVM so that she could exercise her franchise.
Defying the odds, many senior citizens and persons with disabilities arrived at polling booths to cast their votes. In most cases, it was these polling volunteers and a few NCC cadets who were deputed outside polling booths who helped the voters go up to the EVMs.
Speaking to TNIE, 17-year-old Ritesh, a student volunteer said: “I assisted an 85-year-old man who had something like a health monitor on his lap that he kept checking. He could not walk at all and if not for the wheelchair, he would have had to go through a difficult time to reach the EVM.”
The teen, who was one among the two volunteers at a booth in Marredpally, said that only two of the four wheelchairs assigned to the college were in good condition.
“But we were able to manage and help as many as 15 persons in casting their votes,” he said.
Ritesh pointed out that since he did not reach the voting age, he did not have to worry about travelling to cast his own vote and reaching back to the polling booth where he volunteered. However, 19-year-old Pooja, who volunteered at a booth in Addagutta said she travelled to her booth in New Nallakunta around 1 pm, which is when they had a break, to cast her vote.
“I wanted to volunteer so I signed up for the role, but I also wanted to vote, so I travelled during the lunch hour, when not many people were visiting the booth,” she said.
Apart from polling volunteers, NCC cadets were also deployed in different parts of the city with the main focus on helping elderly people and persons with disabilities at the booths. They were briefed as per the ECI guidelines and asked to help manage the queues as well.
“While I felt content helping the voters, we were asked to not interact or try to build conversations with them, so I was not able to learn about them,” one of the cadets said and added, “I have not been added to the voter list yet, but having seen how despite the odds, people are coming to cast votes, I’m sure I will not miss out on voting from the next elections.”