Mourning villagers abstain from voting

Narayanpet: With the villagers of Tileru of Marikal mandal stayed indoors mourning the deaths of the 10 women MGNREGA candidates who were buried alive under a mud of mould on Wednesday in Hyderabad, no one showed much interest to cast their vote in the Lok Sabha elections that were held on Thursday.

The single polling booth that was set up in the local Mandal Parishad School by the election staff witnessed not a single voter visiting the polling booth until after afternoon. In the entire day out of 2,246 voters present in the village only 6 persons visited the polling booth to cast their votes.

When enquired about why people were keeping themselves away from elections, it is said that the villagers have all decided to boycott the elections and stayed away for casting their vote as a sign to mourn the deaths of the 10 women of the village. "This time we have decided not to cast our vote and mark it as mourning for the deaths of the 10 members from our village.

These elections haven't brought us any luck. While the entire village is mourning we felt to stand with the bereaved families in their grief rather than go and vote for the politicians," observed villagers, while commenting on the absence of villagers for voting.

The election staff could record only 6 votes casted in the EVMs until the elections over at 5 PM in the evening.