THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The coastal belt of Thiruvananthapuram City Corporation saw chaotic and uneven voting on Tuesday as thousands of residents turned out for the local body polls. Many voters struggled to find their assigned polling booths, while others discovered their names were missing from the voters list, forcing them to return home without casting their votes.
Local activists estimated that 60 to 100 voters were absent from each polling booth in the coastal wards.
Vishnu M, 31, who arrived at St Philomena’s Girls High School in Poonthura, said he could not vote as his name was missing from the list, even though his entire family was able to cast their ballots. Similarly, 55-year-old Susamma had to check four different booths in search of her 23-year-old daughter’s name, but could not find it.
The confusion follows ward delimitation, which reduced the number of coastal wards under Thiruvananthapuram Corporation from 17 to 14. Many families found members assigned to different booths or wards, leading to long queues at some locations while other booths remained nearly empty. Gertrude Perera, 60, said she and her daughter waited for hours at different booths due to the reallocation.
CPM district secretary V Joy blamed the delay in starting the delimitation process for the confusion. "Like old days, the political parties are not visiting homes for distributing slips and adding voters. These visits happen based on the political affiliation of the families and hence many people in the coastal wards were unable to cast their votes," said V Joy.
Senior Congress leader K Muraleedharan blamed the election commission and the LDF government for the unscientific ward delimitation and adding bogus votes. "There has been a lot of confusion in the voters list and the public struggled to take part in the elections. This will affect all political fronts, not just the UDF," he said.