- Bribe Fighter
- 10 years ago
- 4577 views
Last week, I went to my hometown to get my voter Id (I work in Bangalore…
Last week, I went to my hometown to get my voter Id (I work in Bangalore and hometown is in U.P.). After receiving my Voter Id, I came back home to verify that my name was there in the Electoral List. Thankfully, the EC has made all Electoral Lists available online! I checked and found that my name was registered there. Out of curiosity and lack of anything better to do, after all I was on vacation, I started to scroll through the list and find some recognizable names and addresses. I don’t know why but like a child, I was feeling elated to find my siblings and any known person’s name on the list.
But, when I first saw some unknown person registered at my home address, I thought I am feeling sleepy. I rechecked and found it was true. This got my attention and I ran a random search (Ctrl + F) at my home address and surprisingly, found that there were at least 7 fake registrations! I was furious. How could this be?
I went to my father and asked about it, still considering that may be those were some cousins that I still don’t know (I know it sounds funny since I am 25, but I just couldn’t believe it!). He checked the list himself and was even more shocked to find it true.
He immediately wrote a letter to the Booth Level Officer to quash those fake registrations at once. Even after a week, we did not get any reply from the office. Since my hometown is a small district, everybody knows everybody (and I mean literally). He thought it better to go to the office and check it out himself. As soon as he introduced himself at the entrance and asked for a meeting with the BLO, he saw people in the office passing nervous glances.
The PO took him to a corner and asked what he actually wanted. My father got the hint that he was talking about closing the matter by passing a few bucks. Just to be sure (and to show off what a smart one he is), my father casually asked what is the rate going on. The PO unabashedly quoted some huge figure. We were seriously taken aback by the dare these people had.
Finally, my dad strictly told that he wanted to meet the BLO in person and want to know the status of his application. Someone told him that there was no application received from him regarding the issue he was talking about. Again, showing off his wittiness, my father produced the photocopy of the application he had written.
By now, the officials had got an idea that they were not dealing with some random guy with a random issue. The BLO called him into his office and explained that such issues take time to resolve. My father strictly asked for a deadline and a written reply for his application. It was handed over to him at once.
Within a week we got to know that all those 7 fake voter registrations were cancelled from the Electoral List.
I am proud of my father to not give-in and think that it's a trivial issue and won’t make a difference to anyone's life.