Mahe shares all its cultural traits with Kerala, yet does not share the vibrant political situation of the State. It may come as a shock for the common people in Kerala that the CPI(M), the ruling party in the State, and its arch rival the Indian National Congress have put forth a single candidate against the Bharatiya Janata Party here. More so, one cannot find a poster of any political party or otherwise in this erstwhile French territory that is now an assembly constituency under the Puducherry Lok Sabha segment.
However it is not the seemingly one sided political battle, between the incumbent MP, V.Vaidyalingam of the INDIA bloc and Home and Education Minister of Puducherry A.Namassivayam of the NDA, that is going to mark Mahe in the pages of history this time, but the 140 women polling officers.
Sandwiched between Kannur and Kozhikode districts of Kerala, this district of the Union Territory of Puducherry barely has an area of 9 sq.km.. There are 31,038 voters and 31 polling stations, all of which will be completely managed by women polling officers in the Lok Sabha polls.
“We decided to go for it when we realised that the number of available women polling officers here were double that of men. The women here are mostly well educated. We did not have to think twice about this decision”, Regional Administrator D.Mohan Kumar told The Hindu. The region does not have any recent history of political violence and hence the administration is not overly worried about security either. “Besides the 140 polling officers, we will have seven election overseers, 30-40 women police officers and four women in charge of the postal ballots and vote-from-home programme for senior citizens and differently abled,” Mr.Mohan Kumar said.
The polling officers too seemed excited about being part of history. “We have received rigorous training. We are most ready to do this”, said K.K.Snehaprabha, one of the polling officers.
The polling officers have undergone several rounds of training under T.Shijith, the Assembly level master trainer, M.Sadanandan, the Sector Officer and P.Ravindran, an election subject expert. “We had sessions to boost our confidence and hands-on training. We even filled sample forms”, A.S.Hemalatha, another polling officer said.
Puducherry is going to polls on April 19 and the open campaigning comes to an end on Wednesday. However, the region is rather peaceful, with no sign of an oncoming election anywhere, quite contrary to the Vadakara constituency in Kerala that literally surrounds it.
