Happy to have cast my vote today in India's general election (Parliament) - world's largest ever election - and Andhra Pradesh state assembly election

Last updated on 12th April 2019

I was very happy today to have cast my vote for both the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha) and Andhra Pradesh assembly elections. I fulfilled my obligation as a citizen of democratic India which is the largest (most populous) democracy in the world.

Above pic shows my inked finger after I cast my vote today.

I thought it would be appropriate for me to make a detailed post of my experience of casting my vote in these elections. I first checked my miscellaneous blog to see whether I had put up a detailed post about me casting my vote for the previous elections of 2014 which too, if I recall correctly, were simultaneous elections for both Indian Parliament and Andhra Pradesh assembly. I could not find any such post. The elections were in April-May 2014, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Indian_general_election. I clearly recall that I then spent a lot of time reading up on the electoral process, going through the Election Commission of India website, https://eci.gov.in/, downloading (to my pleasant surprise) not only my voter's information for the elections but also the electoral rolls for my polling station, and checking out a government vehicle which was touring Puttaparthi which demonstrated (through pics if I recall correctly) the electronic voting process using an EVM (Electronic Voting Machine). But I don't recall blogging about it. So I was not surprised to not find any post of mine about my voting in those elections. I don't think I was active on Facebook in April-May 2014 and so I did not check my Facebook posts of that time.

Therefore I decided to make this detailed post covering me casting my vote in this 2019 general and state elections.

A few days earlier I had web-visited the National Voters' Service Portal, https://electoralsearch.in/, located my Voter information details for this election and got a PDF printout of it. This printout provided the key information of Polling Station of Mandal Parishad Primary School (a government run school, if I am not mistaken) with other key details of:
Part Number: 100
Part Name: Yanumulapalli (Chitravathi Road)
Serial No.: 369

The polling date was provided as 11/04/2019 (11th April), confirming that this was the voter information details for me for this 2019 elections.

Yesterday I had spent some time outside the polling station (Mandal Parishad Primary School on Chitravathi Road, Puttaparthi) where a government officer (lady) had voters' slips and voter rolls. Unfortunately the voters' slips which had the photograph of the person as well as voter information details for this election, was all jumbled up and not in order. So though I had these details as a PDF on my (smart)phone which I showed her, it did not help in locating my voter's slip. She asked me to go through the jumbled slips. I spent a lot of time going through it but could not get my slip. She then confirmed that my name is there in the electoral roll (for this election).

Finally, she and her assistant said that with the information on the PDF file that I had and my voter identification card or Aadhar card, I should be able to vote.

In the evening, I went to a Xerox-cum-printing shop and got a printout of the PDF.

Today I used this PDF printout (instead of my voter's slip) and my voter ID card. There was no problem at all. I went to the primary school (polling station) sometime around 11 AM, if I recall correctly. The Polling Station and Part number helped to identify which was my polling booth. Note that this school had two polling booths with Part Number 100 and another Part Number (I think it was 102). A guy at the school entrance guided me to the queue for my polling room. I had to wait for perhaps half an hour to an hour in the queue before I got inside the polling room. There were around 30 gents ahead of me in the queue. Ladies had a separate and smaller queue which moved much faster than the gents queue. So ladies who came later than me, were able to vote quickly and go back while I was still in the queue. I do not have any objections to that and actually appreciate the nice culture of this special treatment for women for such voting activity.

There was one elderly and poor man (seemingly poor going by his dress and appearance) who seemed to suffer from some paralysis. He was being helped to walk/move by some other ladies, perhaps from his family. The staff at the polling room were considerate. He asked for and was given a glass of water to drink. And, of course, he was not asked to wait in any queue. While I did not note his going in to the polling room and then coming out, I am sure he would have been able to do that quickly and with assistance being provided to him for moving around.

Many of the people who were in the queues, both gents and ladies queues, were familiar faces. That was natural as I have lived in this Chitravathi Road area of Puttaparthi for over a decade. It was a very nice feeling to see the Chitravati Road community gather peacefully and in a free and fair manner cast their vote to choose their elected representative for both the Andhra Pradesh state assembly and the Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha).

A policeman was on duty at the entrance of the polling room and asked few people to get in the room when the first table staff on duty had finished dealing with the previous person(s).

There were two posters in Telugu stuck on the wall just before the entrance of the polling room, which listed the candidates, their parties and their election symbols for the Andhra Pradesh State Assembly seat and for Parliament (Lok Sabha). I think they were listed in the order in which the EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) listed them. [BTW I can read Telugu script slowly. So I could make out the information provided.]

On the other side of the entrance, there was another poster on the wall in Telugu mentioning the Polling Part number (100) and the serial number range who were allotted this polling room. My serial number was within this range. So I was able to confirm myself that I was in the right polling room queue (but only after I had got close to the entrance). Earlier I had checked and confirmed with one or two others in my queue that this queue was the Polling Part number 100 queue.

Once in the polling booth/room, I showed the staff (a young man) on the first desk, my voter's information PDF printout and Voter's ID card. The serial number in the former helped him zero in on my name in the electoral roll. He called out the serial number to some other persons seated there who may have been polling agents of political parties. They and he, zeroed in on my entry in their roll copies and called out my name. I raised my hand acknowledging that the name was the right one.

Note that the staff on duty in the polling station, I believe, are government staff allotted this election duty work.

Then I moved to the next table where the staff (a young lady) checked my Voter's ID card and voter's information PDF printout. She then took the voter's information PDF printout, entered my serial number in some register and asked me sign in it. I signed it and moved to the next desk. My Voter's ID card, of course, remained with me.

At the next desk, the young lady staff inked my left index finger and provided me two slips, one white and one pink. She also asked me to wait before moving on to the actual polling booth as another person was casting his/her vote.

The next location to go to in the room was the first polling booth/compartment. One of the polling booths had Shashan Sabha written in Telugu which I presumed meant Assembly and so was the Andhra Pradesh state elections polling booth. The next polling booth/compartment had Parliament in Telugu script written on it, if I recall correctly. I asked the young lady staff to confirm that the first was the assembly voting booth and the second was the Lok Sabha voting booth. She confirmed that the first was the assembly booth whereas she said the second one was for Parliament. Another lady staff seated next to her seemed to say that Lok Sabha is the Parliament. But I had got the confirmation I needed. As I write this post, I do wonder why the label for the assembly booth is Shashan Sabha in Telugu script but the Lok Sabha booth is not called Lok Sabha but is called with the English word, Parliament, written in Telugu script! Perhaps Lok Sabha does not fit in well with Telugu and so the English word Parliament is preferred.

Here's a video of the Election Commission of India showing what the polling booth is like, the process of voting using the EVM (Electronic Voting Machine) and the process of visual feedback for verification of the EVM vote by the voter himself/herself that the connected VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail) machine provides: Know Your EVM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJReQ8ao0SU, 5 min. 13 secs, published by Election Commission of India on 27th Sept. 2018. Given below are some screenshots of this video.

[To open pic in higher resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]

Above pic is screenshot of EVM device (with test election party symbols)

Above pic is screenshot of EVM device and VVPAT device with the covering that is used to cover them from three sides, placed next to them.

Above pic is screenshot of VVPAT device showing the generated paper slip with party symbol being shown prominently. Note that this is shown behind a transparent glass window for 7 seconds to the voter, after which it falls down into another part of the machine which cannot be accessed by the voter.
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A lady was seated before a polling booth whose top area (above table) was covered on three sides with what seemed to be a metal (or perhaps cardboard) three-part sheet (voting compartment). The lady had a device in front of her. As I approached her with one of the two slips (I think it was white slip for Assembly booth but I am not sure), she asked me to wait. The other person had voted and moved but I think the machine was not yet set up for the next vote.

A short while later she beckoned me to go to the voting booth. Now I was not aware of this VVPAT machine being provided along with EVM for this election. In the previous elections I have voted (even Municipal corporation elections), I do not recall seeing a VVPAT machine. So when I went up to the polling booth/compartment, I was a little surprised by seeing the VVPAT machine and at that time I was not sure that it was a VVPAT machine. In fact, I was not that familiar with how VVPAT machines give feeback to the voter but I had read a few articles in Indian mainstream media which referred to VVPAT machines.

Next to the VVPAT machine, I saw the familiar EVM device. I had used such a device in previous elections and was comfortable with that process. I went up to it. I saw the symbol of the candidate and party I wanted to vote for and pressed the button next to that symbol. A red light glowed next to the button I had pressed. That was the confirmation that my button press had been recorded. In other words, my vote had been recorded. There was some action happening on the VVPAT machine. I looked at the small glass window display of the VVPAT machine and, if I recall correctly, saw that it was lit up. I clearly recall  that the symbol of the party that I had voted for was being shown in large and easily recognizable size. At that time I thought perhaps it was an LCD/TFT display which was showing me the symbol of the candidate & party I had voted for. I understood that this is voter feedback to me to confirm that it had recorded my vote correctly. I recall some beep too but I don't recall when exactly the beep sounded.

I moved on to the next voting booth (the Parliament one). I think I had moved on before the 7 seconds of displaying the party symbol I had voted for on the VVPAT machine, was over. That was a small mistake on my side. I should have waited for the 7 seconds and then seen the slip drop down and the screen display become unlit. And I should have also checked that the EVM machine red light glowing next to the button I had pressed had gone off. Me leaving quickly did not impact the recording of my vote. It simply allowed for a possibility that if the next person to vote came quickly to the booth after I left it, he/she would have been able to see the VVPAT machine showing what party I had voted for and perhaps even the EVM machine still showing that.

However, I think the lady staff at the voting booth asks the next voter to wait till the 7 seconds pass and both the VVPAT and EVM machine are ready for the next vote at which time they do not show any indication of what the previous vote was.

After my voting at the State assembly election booth, I proceeded to the next booth and gave the other slip to the lady staff handling that booth. The voting booth was empty. But I was asked to wait by the lady staff at that booth. I think the person who had voted there, like me, had not waited for the machines/devices to get reset thereby not showing anything about how he/she had voted. The lady officer did the right thing in asking me to wait.

After a few seconds, the lady staff motioned to me to go to the voting booth. I repeated the process here (now for Parliament). The VVPAT machine gave me the feedback and this time, I was expecting to see it. It was good to see such confirmation that the candidate and party symbol that I had voted for, did get shown correctly by the VVPAT machine. This time too, I don't think I waited for the 7 seconds to elapse and the machines/devices to get reset thereby not showing to the next person who I had voted for. Hopefully the lady staff would have prevented the next voter from going to this booth before the devices got reset.

As I moved out of the polling room, I did a Namaskar to the policeman on guard at its entrance. He was pleased by it and, if I recall correctly, did a Namaskar to me too. As I moved out of the school, I saw another policeman on duty there. I spoke in Telugu to him that they were doing a good job and thanked him. He was pleased by my words. Note that the policemen were ushering out people from the school who had cast the vote, which was a good thing as groups of people just standing there and not in the queue for voting, would have given a picture of some disorganized event. The policemen were polite but also strict when necessary.

Later in the afternoon when my maid came to my flat, I asked her, who also had voted earlier in the day, whether she knew about these VVPAT machines. She said she knew about them because it was shown on TV. Hmm. I told her that she was more knowledgeable and better prepared for voting this time, than me as I had not known about VVPAT machines being used in this election. She laughed :-). BTW I don't watch TV nowadays though I sometimes see video clips of TV channels on the Internet, and on rare occasions, even live feeds from TV channels.

As in my previous vote in 2014 elections (and, if I recall correctly, a later Puttaparthi municipal corporation - Nagara Panchayath, https://puttaparthy.cdma.ap.gov.in/, - election), the vote was peaceful, free and fair. The atmosphere was friendly. The govt. staff and police did a great job in ensuring discipline. I felt privileged to be part of the largest democracy in the world today and which has had democratic elections with votes for every citizen (male and female) above 18 since independent India's first elections in 1951-52, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_India#History_of_Lok_Sabha_Elections.

I should also mention here that while I did vote in elections in Puttaparthi prior to 2014, i.e. in 2009 and earlier, I think I was very busy with Sai university free service work and other spiritual endeavour that I was involved with then, to get any decent understanding of the electoral process in Puttaparthi and Andhra Pradesh, as well as the various political parties involved. It is after mid 2012 at which time I had parted ways with the Sai university that I focused on outside ashram life in Puttaparthi and spent time to understand the problems of Puttaparthi mandal area in particular and Anantapur district area in general, government initiatives to help solve those problems and the political parties and political leaders involved. I also spent time to understand the electoral process.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Indian_general_election states that as per Election Commission of India, 900 million people are eligible to vote in this 2019 Indian general (Parliament) election, making it the largest-ever election in the world.

I am honoured to have cast my vote in this largest-ever election in the world that is being held in India from today, 11th April to 19th May 2019. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude and my reverential salutations/Namaskars to all those great persons who fought for India to get its freedom from its colonial occupiers, and then established a democratic republic (1947 - independence, 1950 - establishment of republic) with voting power for each and every citizen of the age of 18 and above. I and many other Indians of my generation (I was born in 1962) and later are enjoying the fruits of the hard work and sacrifices for nation building of these great persons of the past.
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Given below is a comment from my Facebook post,  https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/2461061207443775, associated with this blog post:

In response to comment made by a person who is based in the USA that said that she is glad she gets her ballot in the mail and that it is so much easier, I wrote:
I think the USA is a much more advanced and mature democracy than India. I am quite sure that its electoral processes will be good, in general, making it easy for voters. Of course, I am aware of certain issues in USA democracy related to some citizens being denied their right to vote as their names get removed from electoral rolls. But, overall, I think it would be easy for USA citizens to cast their vote in a free, fair and peaceful manner. That comes from USA being a mature and advanced democracy.
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[I thank wikipedia and Election Commission of India, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extracts/screenshots from their website/video on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]