Team Herald
VASCO: Though the election commission had announced to give special thrust to voters with physical disabilities, besides providing other facilities at polling booths across the State, voters at some polling stations in Mormugao taluka encountered serious problems due to lack of certain important facilities including short pandals, lack of water and wheelchair facilities for disabled voters
In Cortalim, soon after voting process kick started, people from Zuarinagar started rushing to their polling stations located in the government school premises. As voters started coming in, the queue of voters began to stretch and by 10 am the line stretched far beyond the pandal.
People at polling station number 6, 7 and 11 of Cortalim constituency complained that the authorities failed to provide proper facilities there and there were no separate queues for men and women.
“Forget about water or any other facilities here, at least the authorities should have erected little longer pandal outside the polling stations so that we could have patiently waited in the long queue, but now we have to stand under hot sun which is unfair and quite irritating,” a voter complaint to Herald.
While long queues were seen all over, the voters at all-women polling station at Upasnagar in Cortalim were facing other issues. There voting was stopped for over 45 minutes as the voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) machine had encountered some technical error.
When Herald inquired from the officials concerned, they informed that the VVPAT machine developed some printing error due to which voting had to be stopped midway and finally after engineers solved the issue, voting restarted.
Similarly, voters from Dabolim claimed that the Pink Polling station number 19 and 20 in Dabolim and few other polling stations in Dabolim reportedly encountered malfunctioning of EVM machine, the issue was later resolved.
In Vasco, voting at polling station number 15 (at St Andrew’s institute building) was stopped for over one hour in the morning as the EVM machine malfunctioned for few hours.
after voting started in the morning. Here too voters had to face inconvenience by standing in long queue until the officials replaced the EVMs and polling restarted after a gap.
In Mormugao as well as Dabolim constituencies voters were upset with the way the authorities failed to provide facilities including wheelchair facility for the disabled voters.
At polling booths 15, 16, 17 and 18 in Mormugao, people were seen literally lifting disabled voters till to voting room and bringing them back and such situation continued until wheelchairs were provided by the officials at such polling stations.
Another problem that people had to face in these polling stations was restriction on mobile phones. Though the senior election officers from Mormugao confirmed to Herald that people can take their mobile phone inside the pooling booths after switching off their mobiles, however, the staff appointed there were not having any such information and were denying voters to entry inside the polling stations with mobile phones.
This created lot of confusion among the voters, many of them went back home to drop their mobile phones and then returned. The issue came to light when the polling staff even stopped media from entering inside the polling station premises with mobile phone, the issue was later resolved after intervention of senior officers appointed on election duty.
Reports of verbal clash between the supporters of different political parties were also reported near some polling stations, however, no untoward incident was reported and overall polling remained peaceful in Mormugao taluka.
