Guess who voted this time!

Me showing the finger

Me, of course! This is the first time I’ve voted, and it felt great. I couldn’t (or didn’t bother to) vote last year during the assembly elections, but this time, when the 15th Lok Sabha elections were announced, I had made up my mind to do whatever it takes to go and vote. It wasn’t easy though. I had to make multiple trips to the Voter Facilitation Centre (VFC) and have wasted more than four hours of my life standing in the stupid queue just to check whether my name has appeared in the draft rolls. When my name wasn’t found even when I went there the second time, I had given up all hopes of voting.

But a couple of days back, I opened the Chief Electoral Officer’s site, and found that they had put up a link to the Final Electoral Rolls, and surprise, surprise, my name was there (albeit with all kinds of spelling mistakes)! I strongly believe there was some kind of divine intervention to put my name there. A quick phone call to the VFC and I found that the last date to get the Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) was over. But I could still vote using my PAN card.

So today morning, I went to the polling booth at 7.30 AM. I wanted to be there early to avoid the long queue. As expected the queue was very less and I was among the first ten people to vote in my booth. There were no objections about my identity from the officers and I exercised my franchise for the very first time! Yay!

So I guess this makes me a responsible citizen of India, and gives me all kinds of rights to indulge in serious debates about Indian politics. Maybe I should write a post sometime about how stupid Sanjay Dutt looks in khadi…