The Indian Youth Congress has accused the Lakshadweep Administration of not putting in place adequate transportation facilities for the return of residents of the archipelago in time for polling to the Lakshadweep Parliament constituency scheduled for April 19.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, M. Ali Akbar, State president of the Youth Congress, Lakshadweep, complained that around 700 residents, mostly from Androth and Minicoy islands, were stranded in various parts of Kerala and outside after not being able to secure tickets to get back in time for exercising their democratic right of voting.
Nearly, 3,500 people from Lakshadweep are in Kerala and outside for studying, medical treatment and other purposes. “Of this, 700 could not yet manage to get tickets. We had submitted their list to the electoral officer in Lakshadweep and the Port department, but to no avail,” said Mr. Akbar.
“Ticket booking is now fully online and the software being used seems to have hitches as many passengers were found unable to go beyond the payment section. Our demand to make at least 50% of tickets offline has also gone unheeded. An earlier practice of distributing tickets of passengers who fail to report at the passenger reporting centre in Willingdon Island has also been stopped without giving any reason, since April 1,” he said.
Lakshadweep, the smallest Union Territory, has an electorate of over 57,000. Accordingly, electoral contests in the island are decided by very small margins. The winner registered a wafer-thin margin of 800 votes in the last election. “Hence, every vote counts and not facilitating all eligible voters of the island to cast their votes by making available transportation facilities may affect the outcome of the election and is therefore undemocratic,” said Mr. Akbar.
Unlike other places, transportation is fully controlled by the Lakshadweep Administration and the residents have no option to fall back on private conveyance. Hence, the administration was duty bound to deploy more services for ensuring that all voters who desired to cast their vote were able to return on time to take part in the democratic exercise, he said.
Mr. Akbar also called for various universities in Kerala to postpone their exams during the week when the election in Lakshadweep was scheduled so that students could return after voting and appear for the exams.
