Showing up their youngsters, Delhi's senior citizens braved the blazing heat, the lack of wheelchairs and ramps and stood in queues to cast their ballot for the candidate and party that they felt could best make a difference to their area.
Eighty-two year-old VK Verma was an embodiment of the can do attitude of the elderly. A neck collar and the long walk from the main gate to the polling booth did not dampen the spirit of this retired Delhi University professor, as he cast his vote in the Janakpuri area in west Delhi.
Speaking to DNA later, Verma said that he believed casting his vote is a duty to the nation. "I have never missed voting since 1951 and feel every citizen should cast their vote," he said.
Others too felt as Verma did. AK Pal and his wife Jaswinder Pal (names changed on request) were ready and eager to exercise their right to vote. Struggling to get out of the cycle-rickshaw, Pal explained just why he and his wife had gone to so much trouble to exercise their vote.
"We are not allowed to take our car inside but we do not want to waste our vote," he said outside the Paschim Vihar polling booth.
The elderly had gone to extraordinary lengths to exercise their vote. From taking paddled or e-rickshaws for a shorter distance between the polling booths and their cars, to having to be carried by their family members to enter the polling booth, many of them braved it all just for the right to vote.
Polling officials lauded their strength of will and admitted, on condition of anonymity, that nothing had been done to help them. Polling booths were ill equipped and there were no special arrangements made for them in areas such as Paschim Vihar, Janakpuri, Nizamuddin, Rajendra Nagar and even most parts of South Delhi.
It wasn't just the can do spirit of Delhi's aged population that impressed it was also the physically challenged. Wheelchair-bound, Kishore Kukreja, 47, was one such example. Carried in by a family member, at the Dilshad Garden voting booth, as the booth had no ramp, Kukreja said all the effort was worth it.
"I am here to vote for cleanliness and to make MCD corrupt free," he said.
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