A word to voters

J M Behl
Election for the Lok Sabha seats in our country are approaching fast. People are eagerly waiting, after getting their names, included in the new voters’ list, for casting their vote. The candidates / the parties are striving hard to win over the voters in their favour by adopting all available means whether permitted by the Election Commission of India or otherwise. The Government of India has not left any stone unturned to ensure that all the eligible candidates including the youths, do get their names registered  / included in the concerned voters’ lists after doing lot of amendments and  giving final touches till recently. The propaganda by the different party’s activists and the canvassing wind is quite warm almost in every part of the country. The mouthful speeches by prominent political dignitaries are delivered covering so many constituencies in a single day by making use of all available means of communications. The manifestos are issued making attractive promises to get the favour of the masses. The drums of the achievements made in past 5, 10 years, are beaten by the parties who have fielded their candidates in the fray and in the bargain we see lot of allegations / counter  allegations from each other for making their view point more fatty, thus more confusing the general public in deciding whom to vote in the coming election.
Whom to vote ? To a party or to a personality ? Yes it is not an easy thing to decide especially when we see lot of clouds and thunders are being generated in the atmosphere in these days of elections by both the parties as well by the personalities , when they just blame the opposing one in their field and go to an extent that for rectifying each other’s mistakes, the Election Commission has to show its teeth. Only God knows whether after the intervening of the Commission, the anger / hatred  thus created for the opposing one, goes off, from the minds of contesting ones, temporarily or permanently but one thing is sure that the ill words poured once in the ears of an innocent voter by any of the party or personality will definitely damage the image of the targeted one for quite a long period and thus an unnecessarily created hatred will keep on humming around him even on the day of voting making it more difficult to decide on which button his finger should work. Probably this could be one of the reasons for the  Election Commission, to create an extra option on the EVMs (NONE OF THE ABOVE ), to be used by a voter.
To my mind, in the balancing scale of justice, the personality gets an edge over the party while deciding whom to vote, because it is the individual one, on whom we can depend more, his personal life , his own character, his  image in society, his education, his power of speech, his way of projecting his constituency’s problems, his availability for the public, his concern / patience  to listen his people , his affectionate approach even to the minor issue in his area and finally his will to work with the same zeal and mood for the entire period of his being in the chair, will help us to decide whether to vote for him or not. It is thus, a continuous process of accessing a personality whom we have been frequently meeting since long and watching his activities  from years together and should not decide spontaneously to cast our vote just having been moved by listing the fabricated forceful speeches , delivered during the election campaigns .
We are observing these days that many people are leaving their parties and are either contesting independently or on some other party’s ticket. This ordinarily should not happen but we have to assess it very deeply whether the individual has shifted the party for the cause of his constituency or only for the sake of grabbing power and once we have been fully convinced then it is not going to be difficult whether to embrace that personality or to discard him.
To conclude , let us not move by the wave or by the circumstances / emotions,  also by not favouring any caste or creed and decide wisely whom to vote purely on the merits of the candidate and in this way only genuine, true  and most deserving personalities would be sent to the chairs by each one of us in the coming elections.

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