The good, the bad, and the ugly

There were many people who went back without casting their votes as they had already been cast. One woman voter said, “My husband has asked me to vote on the symbol third from below and second from the top. In fact, all my friends are also doing the same.” People voted in groups, without privacy, as election officers watched. One of the staffers even snatched an Express Newsline photographer’s camera, but subsequently returned it.

Quick,it’s closing time: Karol Bagh was quite unremarkable till the last hour of polling. “You know bhaiya (brother), I have already voted twice,” said a teenager at a polling agent’s table. He got a vigorous pat on his shoulder. At 4.55 pm, as an Express Newsline reporter entered a polling booth, there was a flurry of activity in one of the sections of the No. 25 booth. It was obvious that the serial numbers of voters who had failed to turn up were being scribbled on the counterfoils of the ballot papers.

Hauz Khas low on enthusiasm: The supposedly cool constituency’ of Hauz Khas, which is widely expected to send Sushma Swaraj to the Assembly, hotted up’ when news spread that some 500 people in Gautam Nagar were taken ill after eating namkeen supplied by persons whose identity or political affiliations are yet to be ascertained. A Congress supporter outside the polling centre at Father Agnel School boasted: “I’m here to identify impersonators. I know each and every voter.” A die-hard BJP voter reacted by claiming that the Congress “is trying to create trouble and have inducted pehlwaans from Rohtak”.

However, the BJP vote-bank the middle-class largely kept away from the polling.“I’ve been voting ever since I came to Delhi after the Partition and I’ve never seen such lack of enthusiasm,” said Vimla Virmani as she slowly walked to polling booth No. 68 around 10 am.

Uneven playing field: Kirti: It is widely believed that the higher the turnout in these elections, the better the chances of the Congress riding to power. In Gole Market, which has its CM-candidate Sheila Dikshit in the fray, the party pulled out all stops in its attempt to get voters to the polling stations. Sluggish voters were therefore persuaded to make the trip and there was an unusually high 50 per cent turnout. Added to this was the typically angry voter, Raju Shri, who spoke to an Express Newsline reporter as she waited for her husband outside polling booth No. 36: “If he does not come in the next 10 minutes, I will go ahead and vote. I run my kitchen and I want to make sure that someone pays for the problems that I have faced.” Ex-cricketer and Dikshit’s main opponent Kirti Azad was far from upbeat. He complained that the Congress had “brought in 30 women from Uttam Nagar for bogus voting.” Bad losers in sport normally complain about poor umpiring/refereeing and, by Saturday, Azadwill probably have joined their ranks.

Bidhuri’s backyard: Badarpur has been Congress candidate Ram Vir Singh Bidhuri’s fiefdom. But he has changed parties with the speed similar to a chameleon changing its colours. Independent candidate and rebel Congressman Ram Singh Netaji has emerged a favourite among voters in the rural and sensitive areas like Tejpur, Molar Bund and Jaitpur and this could trouble Bidhuri. “Most of us here are from Bihar,” said juice-seller Nareshwar Singh, as he left a polling booth. “We would normally have voted blindly for Bidhuri. But he has not done much work for us in the past five years".

Bidhuri has 16 opponents, with almost all national parties fielding candidates from Badarpur. Their vote share will determine Bidhuri’s chances. About 60-70 per cent of Badarpur’s voters turned up. And impersonation was rampant.

Independent they stand: A low voter turnout in the Chandni Chowk area, averaging at about 40 per cent, is likely to significantly harm the BJP, which held the seat in the dissolved Assembly. Independents Chakresh Jain (BJP rebel) and Amod Kumar Sharma (Congress rebel) have made a considerable dent in the electoral fortunes of the BJP’s Viresh Pratap Chaudhary and the Congress’s Prahlad Singh Sahni in Chandni Chowk. Both are strong candidates in their own right and Jain is likely to bag a sizeable number of votes from his own and Vaish communities, who have a strong presence in the region. In all, an expected swing of 10,000 to 15,000 votes from among 97,000-strong electorate would determine the final outcome.

In Paharganj, polling was slow. The Chitragupta Road polling station had polled just 24 votes till 11 am Though the BJP boasts of a strong and committed cadre in this area, an anti-establishment wave is clearly working to the favour of the Congress’s Anjali Rai, despite the fact that she is a new face. In Ballimaran Assembly constituency, Haroon Yusuf of Congress seemed better placed in comparison with his BJP rival B.D. Sharma.

Not much of a choice: Officials at the Dabri police station were on the run all day long today. With the detention of Independent candidates Anil and Devender, skirmishes outside every second polling booth and countless panic calls, the “sensitive” Nasirpur constituency lived up to its reputation. Officials lost count of the number of bogus calls received on 100 by midday. Says a constable: “Our people have been running from one booth to another, only to discover that the distress call was in fact just a minor argument. But we did not take any chances”.

And neither did anybody else. In a constituency where the two key players are better known by the number of “musclemen” that surround them, both the voters and polling officers were a little wary. While BJP candidate Vinod Sharma has been accused by his detractors of setting dogs on people he doesn’t like, Congman Mahabal Mishra is described as the “better bad guy” by the residents of the area. The day started with the detention of two Independents for “preventing voters from entering the polling booth and generally making a nuisance of themselves”.

Public memory not so short: A large number of Scheduled Caste voters, who form a sizable chunk of the electorate in Sadar Bazar Assembly constituency, were today bitter with the Congress candidate Rajesh Jain. Reason: He had allegedly passed some unsavoury remarks against their community during the last municipal elections and they wanted to avenge that today. Jain had reportedly deserted the party to side with an Independent candidate and has now returned to the Congress fold.

“As a result, even sworn Congressmen from our community in this area will vote against Rajesh Jain,” claimed Monu Chandelia. And that seems to be working in favour of BJP candidate Hari Krishan, since Jain’s votes are being split between BSP and JD. The voters in this predominantly slum area with nearly one lakh voters seemed resigned to electing the BJP candidate, despite a strong sense of dissatisfaction.