I cannot get the faces of the women voters of the Millatnagar ward of the Maninagar constituency out of my mind. This was the constituency in which Gujarat’s strongman Narendra Modi was pitted against Congress’s Yatin Oza. Millatnagar is the only Muslim pocket in a predominantly Hindu constituency. We went there because we wanted to see whether the Muslims were able to vote freely. Having read about the likely intimidation of the Muslim voters we wanted to witness the truth for ourselves.Right away we were struck by the freedom with which Muslim women and men had turned out to vote. They were milling around in huge numbers. On their faces there was no trace of fear. But whether or not they could vote is another story. As soon as we reached we kept coming across people whose names were nowhere to be found on the voters’ lists. They showed us their voter ID- cards, they claimed that they had been voting for the last 25 years from the same constituencies, but where were their names? L.N. Ansari of Ahbab Nagar and his wife Hadithun Begum showed their photo ID’s but despite going from pillar to post could not find their names on any list. Aqleem Husain from Zainab Bi ki Chali was desperate to vote. He claimed his name had been struck off. One woman Rehana Banu said her feet hurt from being shunted from desk to desk. A young man was going around with his driver’s licence saying ‘I am alive’; his name was struck off as ‘deceased’. We looked for someone who could help out. An official car was parked nearby where a man was drinking tea. He was the sector magistrate, one Mr Dave. What can be done for these people, we asked. Nothing, he said.No matter if they have photo IDs; if their names are not on the list they can’t vote. Go to the deputy collector Mr Jhala, he advised, then rolled up the windows and continued drinking tea. Meanwhile we heard that the Congress candidate Yatin Oza had arrived. This gentleman appeared most unperturbed. ‘What should be done to help these people exercise their constitutional right,’ we asked. ‘Nothing, behenji,’ he said. ‘If we get involved at this eleventh hour we will lose the ones whose names are on the list’. We backed off from Yatin. But the crowds were so desperate that we decided to pursue it to the next logical step which had been suggested by all the polling booth officials. Take the matter to the Deputy Collector Jhala.At the gate we went through the drill of ‘Jhala is here, he is not here’. Then we were shunted from office to office in search of the right man. We realised then that this was a losing battle. We would not find Jhala or anyone who could respond to those in Millatnagar desperate to vote.Later doing the rounds of the city, we learnt of other malpractices. In Pachmahals, for instance, voters were instructed to press the first button — the BJP. But we were not eyewitnesses to this. I wonder then how many Muslims are included in the 63 per cent who voted on Thursday?
