comprise just three per cent of the total 17.4 lakh voters in Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, but 38.73 per cent of the total 16,338 “mapped” Kashmiri Pandit migrant voters cast their votes at special polling stations set up in Jammu on Monday, to assert that “we too exist somewhere and want the Valley become a better place for the youth living there”.
Officials said the figure was three times the nearly 2,500 migrant voters who cast their votes in Srinagar LS constituency in the 2019 polls.
A total of 52,100 migrant voters staying across the country are eligible to cast vote in Srinagar Lok Sabha constituency, but only 16,338 of them could be mapped by the authorities, said an election official.
“Our vote may not bring any direct change in our lives, but we have come here (polling station) to show that we too, number- wise, exist somewhere and we also support today’s Kashmir which is changing for the better,’’ said Harshita Dhar, a first-time voter who travelled all the way from Delhi to cast her vote at a special polling station set up at Jagti township near Nagrota in Jammu.
“I know that we are electing an MP who will work for a constituency where we do not live, yet I want to have a better Kashmir where my parents spent some part of their early life before migrating to Jammu in the wake of militant violence in the Valley 1990,” she said.
“They were hardly 9 or 10 at that time and they do not have any good feel of Kashmir, but we, the youngsters, now want it to change for the better,’’ she said, adding that unlike 1990s when people there was not ready even to accept their history (historical existence), “today they treat us with respect’’.
A 35-year-old government employee, who wished not to be named, said that though his vote doesn’t bring any direct impact on his life, he has come to vote only to ensure that his name continues to exist as an Indian citizen in official records. Moreover, he hopes that “his vote will make someone listen to us one day”.
What is the other option available to them, asked Sanjay Bali, 40, who cast his vote at a special polling station in Jagti township for KP migrants. “There are government welfare schemes for everyone including Gujjars, Bakarwals, but we cannot think of anything,’’ he said, adding that he has, however, come to cast his vote as he is an Indian first and it is his fundamental right to exercise his right to vote.\
Ritua Raina, whose husband had migrated from Habbakdala in 1989, said that they have cast their vote as they believe in democracy.
Meanwhile , a group of migrants at Jagti township near Nagrota, where special polling stations were set up by the Election Commission, held a demonstration after finding their names missing from the voter lists.
The Election Commission, in a bid to increase the poll percentage among migrants, had done away with the practice of making them fill up ‘Form M’ to cast vote in their native parliamentary constituencies in the Valley. They would now be “mapped” constituency-wise with special polling stations to be set up in the zones that they are residing in currently, the EC had said, adding that they will have to bring with them.
Veena, a resident of Jagti township, came to the polling station along with three members of her family. All of them were carrying their EPIC (Voter ID) cards, but they had to return without casting their vote as their names were missing from the voters list.