I slept one night in a famous Women's college in the heart of Hyderabad!! Yes! You read it right!!
Surprised? Astonished? Intrigued? Read on....
In 1991 I was working in APOILFED, a Co-op Federation, managed by Govt
of AP. And for the General elections held in that year almost all our
employees were drafted for the election duty! And needless to say, once a
person is drafted s/he can't escape, come what may.
As I was a Manager I was assigned Presiding Officer duty and was
allotted to Reddy's Women's College, Narayanaguda in the heart of
Hyderabad! I was very lucky to get a decent concrete building; few of my
colleagues were assigned to booths in Govt schools which lacked even
basic facilities like decent toilets and some of the buildings were in a
very bad shape.
To give an idea about the inside view of operations let me explain in
brief how the whole election exercise is handled, of course, limiting my
experience to only booth level!
We (Presiding Officers) were asked to report for duty at Osmania
University from 12 noon onward on the day preceding the polling day. I
reported at 1 PM and had to stand in queue at a designated counter. And after some waiting I was given ALL the
polling material i.e., ballot papers, ballot boxes, 2 sets of voters
list, booth Number & name banners, gunny bags, sealing lac, few
hundreds cash & other paraphernalia. Then I had to wait, with all that material, for
couple of hours when I was ushered in to a RTC bus along with few other
Presiding Officers. And the bus took a circuitous route dropping each PO
at their assigned booths and I was dropped off around 5 PM!
The watchman took me inside the college and guided me to the auditorium
which will be the booth, the next day. I kept all the material there,
locked the room and went on a tour of the college, it being my first
visit to a women's college! And after few minutes of touring told watchman to put
chairs in the garden and settled there. Around 6 PM a young SI of Police
"reported" to me along with few constables making me feel like a VIP :)
They will be safeguarding the booth till the polling is over. And the
SI and I went talking shop till late in the night. He told me his
different experiences as a Police officer and I told him some of mine!
Dinner miraculously appeared around 9 PM! Finally I retired to my
"bedroom" of that night, the auditorium!
Once inside it was a little scary experience, what with me alone in that
BIG hall. I arranged 3/4 benches side by side and made myself
comfortable on them, if one can call that! I kept all the material next
to me on the benches and tried to sleep almost hugging the ballot boxes.
I kept one light on throughout the night and had a very disturbed
sleep due to new surroundings, mosquitoes, tension and stress
building up inside, imagining various things that could go wrong the
next day!
Finally I woke up at 5 AM and had a bath under the tap in the garden!
The Polling Officers reported around 6 AM and then all of us made the
booth ready for the voting. I was surprised to see a queue forming just
before the polling commenced! And it all went off smoothly till evening
and finally after the polling ended we sealed the boxes and the Polling
Officers left. After some time the bus with heavy police security came
to pick us and it was 11 PM by the time I handed over all the materials
to the concerned authorities. Then I went home at midnight without
dinner and slept like a log!
And that's how I slept a night in a women's college:)
PS: Incidentally Sri V S Sampath, the present Chief Election Commissioner, was our MD for a couple of years!
PPS: Only when someone does an election duty, they will appreciate the
scale, magnitude of operations, massive planning, security concerns,
logistics etc., involved in conducting General Elections pan India!
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