GUNTUR: Several voters faced severe inconvenience during polling due to confusion in polling booth numbers and voter serial numbers and false information on Monday.
A few days before the elections, while a political party distributed voter slips to voters in a door-to-door campaign in old school style, others sent details of booth number, serial number, address of the polling booth through messages to the mobiles of the voters.
Several voters who came from other States cast their votes, when they checked their serial numbers and polling stations, only to find out that they were in the wrong polling station or their serial number was wrong.
After facing severe inconvenience, the voters can’t help but suspect that this was a ploy of that party to reduce poll percent in the segment or a mere coincidence.
“I was unaware that voter slip is really important. I didn’t receive any and a day before polling. I received a message from a political party containing all details including my EPIC number. After standing in the queue for nearly two hours, the staff informed me that my serial number is wrong. Though I wanted to return back, I was determined to cast my vote. I got my booth and serial number from the ECI app and suffered a long wait of another 90 minutes,” a voter said.
Majority of first time voters and young voters faced such issues with false information. The similar problem was witnessed by a family of four, who received similar messages from the same political party.
“We went through the ECI website to know about the process of polling. But the staff in the polling station refused to search for our votes in the long list due to huge crowds and asked us to return back only with the serial number. Thankfully, we found a polling agent and got the correct details and were able to cast our vote. Political parties should be responsible and not send such false information to confuse the voters,” said the family members.