49-O voters face confused officials at booths

49-O voters face confused officials at booths
TNN | Apr 14, 2011, 02.37am IST

CHENNAI: Many voters who wanted to exercise the 49-O option faced hurdles on Wednesday as officials on polling duty were not aware of the procedure involved.

As per the rules, if you do not want to vote for any of the candidates but want to ensure that your voting right is not misused, then you can opt for 49-O. However, when Karthikeyan Hemalatha of Thousand Lights constituency went to his polling booth, he was in for a surprise. "I had decided to section 49-O as a mark of political dissent," he says. Since the option was not available on the EVM, he asked the nearest official about the procedure.

"All the officials stared at me, perplexed," says Karthikeyan. One official also repeatedly asked him if he wanted to vote. "Luckily, another official understood what I was talking about and explained the procedure to me," says Karthikeyan.

At Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Virugamballam, when a voter asked for the forms for 49-O, party agents asked him to cast his vote, while the polling officer was not aware of the option. When the voter insisted, he was made to wait for 15 minutes, after which the presiding officer allowed him to sign on the register saying he had not voted for anyone and had opted for section 49-O.

For V Gopalakrishnan, this was the second time he and his wife Leelavathi were exercising the 49-O option. "The last election, I had to argue for an hour with polling officers to let me exercise the 49-O option. This time, the officials at lest knew what I was talking about," says Gopalakrishnan. "But my wife had a problem in her booth in Velachery, when the poll officials shouted at her about why she wanted the ink on her finger when she was using the 49-O option. Looks like no one briefed them that 49-O is a vote too," he adds.

Chief electoral officer Praveen Kumar said they had received widespread complaints from all over the state regarding 49-O. Despite their best efforts, some polling officers were not aware about the procedure involved.