If it was actor-turned-politician K Chiranjeevi, who had to eat humble pie and stand in queue to vote in Hyderabad last week, actor M Mohan Babu almost had a similar experience when he went to vote at Rangampet in the Chandragiri constituency near here Wednesday.
Mohan Babu tried to walk into a polling booth, but was asked to stand in queue by a woman but, unlike Chiranjeevi who had to stand in queue for almost an hour, Mohan Babu stood in the queue for a brief period before swapping his place with a relative.
Mohan Babu, along with his mother and son Vishnu, went to the polling station in the morning hours. First, he tried to proceed ahead without standing in the queue. This he did while interacting with those standing in queue. Suddenly, a woman asked him to stand in the queue. With mediapersons around and the bitter experience of Chiranjeevi in mind, Mohan Babu went near the woman and struck up a conversation with her. “Do you think I am the kind of person who violates rules? I will certainly come in the queue,” he said smilingly. The woman, in turn, responded that she asked him to stand in queue so that she and others would get a chance to see him for a while. “If you stand in queue, we can see you for some time,” she said.
Smilingly, Mohan Babu went near the woman, posed with her for photographs and went back to stand in the queue. As he was chatting with the voters there, his son Vishnu, also an actor, came to his rescue and suggested to his father that he take the place of a person standing ahead in the queue. After taking the ‘permission’ of the mediapersons present there, the father-son duo went inside the polling station and cast their votes.
After casting his vote, Mohan Babu asked the polling officials whether he could cast the vote of his mother as she could not climb the steps and enter the station. “My mother is aged around 84 years and she cannot climb the steps. Is there a provision that I can vote on her behalf?” he asked the staff.
When the polling staff politely refused to allow him to do so, he asked his followers to escort his mother, who was waiting in the car, and took her inside the polling station and helped her press the button on the electronic voting machine (EVM).
“Those who violate rules are inefficient fellows,” he said later and likened them to buffaloes.