The Governor also said she had once been forced to have a ‘beedi’ by voters, while campaigning for her husband Dr Ram Kripal Sinha.
“I was just 10 years of age in 1952, when I first voted. Obviously it was a bogus vote. I had gone to the polling booth with my parents and wanted to cast my vote just like the others. I was literally crying. So my father and the booth officer gave me a piece of paper to put in the ballot box,” Sinha said at the function organized to celebrate National Voters Day, 2015.
“I first properly voted soon after getting married in 1962. I was very happy but surprised to see hardly a few women voting,” she added.
Narrating some incidents, Sinha said her husband contested his first election in 1968, and during the campaign she found it difficult to convince women to cast their vote. “We were sent to a family, comprising 24 voters, who had refused to cast their votes. I along with four female colleagues tried to convince the head of the family – a female,” she said.
“At one point of time we thought we had succeeded in convincing them. The lady brought five ‘beedis’ and asked us to have them. I said ‘hum beedi nahi petye’ (we don’t smoke), she said, ‘hum vote nahi dete’ (we don’t vote). On that note, I took the ‘beedi’ in my hand and put it between my lips. But soon the lady realized that I was not a smoker and she told me not to do that,” Sinha said.
The Governor compared the 2014 Lok Sabha election that gave clear mandate to Narendra Modi, with the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, wherein, too, people came out in large number and voted for a change.
“This needs to be the attitude of the youth. The youth need to come forward in large numbers and vote,” she said adding, “it is easy to point fingers at the failures or at corrupt governments, but we need to come forward and work to bring in the change.”
Sinha said that apart from the four pillars of democracy, one needs to consider the voluntary organizations as the fifth pillar of democracy, as they play a great role in educating the masses about various issues.
