Given an option, most electorate in Tamil Nadu will disapprove taking cash for votes. Often, they have no option but to accept freebies and money as politicians hold a veiled threat, says the preliminary result of a latest survey.
The Survey 2014 conducted across India by the National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms (NEWADR) to know about people’s perception about their Member of Parliament (MP) started in the first week of February.
“In principle most respondents say they are against taking money for exercising their franchises, but politicians threaten them with dire consequences if they refuse to accept the offer,” said B Pandiarajan, a member of the team, which conducted the survey in the Madurai parliamentary constituency. Similar responses were received from most constituencies in the state.
When asked whether they get to know about the criminal records of candidates prior to election, voters say they don’t get access to such information. “We only look whether the candidate is capable of delivering good service to us,” was the response of most persons surveyed people to volunteers’ question: “Why do you think people vote for candidates with criminal records?”.
Most respondents wanted the PM candidate to be a visionary. Besides, many expressed unhappiness over the performance of Alagiri, P Chidambaram and J K Ritheesh as PMs. “The moment Alagiri’s name was mentioned, people shot back, you know about his performance than us and then why are you asking,” the volunteers say.
Though most people acknowledged Chidambaram’s welfare schemes, they said only people close to him and Congressmen only benefited from these schemes.
The volunteers have interviewed 500 voters across the rural and urban areas in each constituency of Tamil Nadu during the sample survey.