No-vote option goes for a toss

The State Election Commission (SEC) may have promised voters the option to cast ‘no-vote’ in the civic polls, but it failed to make arrangements for the same.

The EC assured voters’ registers would be available at polling booths to register the negative vote in the prescribed format.

But such registers were nowhere to be seen. The Electronic Voting Machines did not have the ‘no-vote’ option. 

When KB Srinivasan ,73, former state chief secretary, reached the polling booth at Sachivalaya Gymkhana on Thursday morning at 10.15 am to cast his ‘no-vote’, he was aghast to see that not only was no such arrangement made, but even the presiding officers at the booth were unaware of the ‘provision’.

Srinivasan told DNA: “After being stopped from casting my vote because State Election Commissioner Nand Lal reached the polling booth to cast his vote, I returned home.”

But this wasn’t the end for Srinivasan as he returned to the polling booth after an hour.

“I returned with my wife to further enquire about the ‘no-vote’. I also carried a copy of the day’s DNA edition which published the SEC’s note on ‘no vote’,” he said.

Srinivasan showed the note to the presiding officer and asked him if any such provision had been made or if there was a form or register available. “The presiding officer, K Desai, sent a person to the adjacent polling booth to find out if there was any such arrangement but the person returned empty-handed,” said Srinivasan.

Srinivasan then asked the presiding officer to write on a paper that “he didn’t wish to cast his vote as he found no candidate was worthy of being voted”. The presiding officer wrote this on the back of the polling data report (that is presented to the returning officer) and assured Srinivasan that his ‘no vote’ would be taken into account. But the events didn’t stop here. Srinivasan returned home and contacted Nand Lal to seek information on what arrangements the SEC had made for registering the ‘no vote’.

Srinivasan was shocked to hear Nand Lal’s response. Srinivasan said: “When I called Nand Lal, he told me that he had no time to talk to me as he had other important work to do and denied the reports published in newspapers about the ‘no-vote’.”

“He didn’t even let me complete what I wanted to ask him and disconnected the call,” said Srinivasan. But what was it that led to Srinivasan’s decision to cast a ‘no-vote’? “In the last 26 years, no elected candidate ever asked me about the problems we face. They have been indifferent to complaints we filed repeatedly raising our problems. They never replied,” said Srinivasan.

Many other voters, who wanted the ‘no-vote’ option, also faced similar problems. Santosh Mistry, 35, who went to the booth at Kamraj High School in Dharavi, was told that there was no such provision. When Mistry reported the matter to the returning officer, the officer asked him to make an entry in a register specifying his desire to cast a negative vote.