Google form draws peeved voters

Hours after thousands of voters from Kalyan couldn’t vote on Monday for the Lok Sabha election, Akshat Pathak, a banker, circulated a Google form to be filled by whoever missed voting so he can take it up in court to uphold the constitutional right to vote

Thane: Hours after thousands of voters from Kalyan couldn’t vote on Monday for the Lok Sabha election, Akshat Pathak, a banker, circulated a Google form to be filled by whoever missed voting so he can take it up in court to uphold the constitutional right to vote.

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Within 12 hours, some 2,050 people had filled up the forms. Of this, a majority have been residing at the same address for the last 20 years and had voted twice for Lok Sabha election. Yet their names were however deleted this time.

As per data from the district collector, in Kalyan West constituency, the voter turnout stood at 52.98%.

Pathak wanted the issue of missing voters to go beyond social media chatter. “Of those who have filled the form so far, 90% are ready to become petitioners. People are aware of their rights and therefore took the effort to go to the polling booth. But the system of voting this time was completely mismanaged,” said Pathak. “If such large numbers of voters’ names have been deleted, they will lose trust in the election process. We have arranged a video conference with everyone to discuss the course of action.”

Chandrashekhar Joshi, 63, who has been living in the same area and same society since 2005, was surprised when he didn’t receive the voting slip. “I have been voting for a long time. This time, my wife’s name was on the list but my name was deleted. I have seen 100 to 200 people from one society who couldn’t vote because their names were deleted,” said Joshi.

For former journalist, Sudhir Pandit, 79, this was the first time since he turned 21 years old that he could not vote because his name was missing from the voters list. “Despite my age, I went to the nearby election commission office twice to ask whether my name has appeared on the voter list, but I was arrogantly told that the list was yet to be prepared and asked what was the hurry,” said Pandit.

On Tuesday, MNS leader Manoj Gharat appealed to people whose names have been deleted from the list to reach the MNS office in Kalyan and give their names.

The returning officer of Kalyan, Shushma Satpute told HT, “Only the survey officer can answer all your questions. But now everyone is resting after 48 hours of work, so I can’t ask or give you the details.”