It was our 4th visit to Election Office (BBMP) to collect our Voters id card and like all the previous times we were not given the cards.
Strange part we did manage to cast our vote on 5th May.2 Saturdays before that we had been trying to get the cards but we were not given. But on Election Day since our names were there in the voters list we were allowed to vote by showing our ‘Aadhar cards’.
We were told to collect cards after the election as the workers were busy with election duty. After that twice again we went and again the conversation went as below:
We: Sir we have to collect our voters id card.
Officer 1: (looking at us up and down) hmm, which language kannada/tamil
We:Hindi/English
Officer 1: (with some strange facial expression):hmm,yawa area? (*yawa is a kannada word which means ‘area’)
We: XYZ area
Officer 1: ok, go to other counter he takes care of that area, I take care of other area.
We went to Officer 2.And same story is repeated ,same set of questions ,sent to some other counters and finally again sent to counter 1 where this time he said that he is not responsible for card distribution.
We get irritated and there is some shouting from our side. One of the guy says the key of the drawer which has cards is with other person and he has still not reached (it was 11:10 AM).Then I realized they were speaking to each other in kannada and making fun of us.
I felt if we bring somebody along with us who knew the local language would help .Then we saw a mother with her daughter who had come to collect their voter’s card.
They requested the officers to hand them their cards as the daughter had to fly to US and require the card as identity proof. They were speaking in kannada and even they were made to run from one counter to other without any result.
We got so frustrated and hubby lost his cool, biggest mistake that he did. He said he will escalate the matter.
On hearing this the officers too got angry and asked us to take down the mobile number that was written on the black board and make a complain.
They also said that after election is over its not their responsibility to hand over the cards .When we reminded them that we came before election too and were asked to come after elections they accused us saying that we must have heard wrong.
Hubby then asked them to give in writing that they are not in a position to give our cards as it’s not their duty .On hearing this they started screaming (screaming is still a better word, may be howling) at us in some alien language .We were scared and felt these people were ready to pin us down anytime.
We just left the place highly frustrated and scared L
lampnitslight 