Casting of votes a big challenge for Agency villagers

Kothagudem: For the people of the Agency villages, casting of votes is a big challenge as the polling booths are located at far distance and to reach their they do not have any facility.

Casting of vote is a right for every eligible voter and the government as well as the Election Commission is giving much publicity to use of voting rights during the elections.

And to ensure that more and more people enrol in the voters list, the electoral officials conducted several awareness camps in villages. So that more and more people take part in the whole exercise of the election of new governments, the Election Commission took many measures.

Even the EC is making special arrangements for the physically challenged people so that they can cast their votes and electoral officials are being trained to help them. But the problem is for the people who are living in remote villages of the Agency in the district.

As they had faced problem in reaching the polling booths in the last elections, they will have to go through the same situation this year also since the polling booths are located very far.

According to them, they will have to trek for 3-5 kilo meters to reach their polling booths. And at the pooling booths they will have to stand in long queues to wait for their turns to come. And this situation prevails in most of the villages in the Agency.

Due to no road connectivity, the problem has only aggravated with the passage of time. In Kothagudem district, in some villages of Gundala and Manuguru areas, people are worried how to reach the polling booth to cast their votes? They will have to travel at least three to four kilo meters to reach the nearest village.

According to sources, in Manuguru division, the Regulagundi village has 100 votes and the nearby polling station at Manuguru is five kilometres form that village. In other villages of the same division, Budigula and Adavi Ramavaram villages are located at the same distance.

In Gundala mandal, people of six villages have 600 votes. But all 600 people will have to trek for 5 kilo meters to cast their votes. In Pinapaka, Karakugudem mandals in four villages, the nearest polling station lies five kilo metres away.

Since the polling stations are very far from the villages and election are making little change in their lives, the villagers are losing interest in casting of votes. The people are urging to officer to provide mobile voting booth for their villages for casting of votes in the upcoming elections. But the officials say that they are going to do for sure.

Speaking to the Hans India, Pinapaka Assembly constituency election returning officer TAV Naga Laxmi said in around seven mandals they have arranged 204 polling stations for the upcoming elections. As many as 13 villages are lying in very remote areas.

Nearly three to five kilometres distances from the polling stations in that villages, she said. She also said that there are two streams which the voters will have to cross to reach the polling booth.

When asked why the Election Commission made arrangements for the people living in remote villages so that they could cast their votes without any difficulty, she said, “due to the short time given for preparations for the elections, we made only arrangements to transport the physically challenged people for casting of their votes on that day.”