Election workers in India traveled 300 miles over 4 days to set up a polling booth — for one voter. Indian election rules mandate that no voter should have to travel more than 1.24 miles to cast a ballot.
By Niha Masih Niha Masih Foreign correspondent covering India Bio Follow April 17 at 11:44 AM MALOGAM, India — In the fading afternoon light, Gammar Bam glanced down nervously at a fast-flowing river in a corner of northeastern India. His team had already driven eight hours on one-lane mountainous roads and shaky bridges. Now they were trekking on a slippery path hugging a cliff.
“There is both excitement and nervousness,” said Rupak Tamang, one of the team members, as he set up the voting machines. “If the one voter turns up, there will be 100 percent voting, but if she doesn’t, then it will be zero percent.” To conduct the poll, the Election Commission relies on more than 11 million government employees and security personnel who temporarily become election officials. Bam, a 35-year old engineer in Arunachal Pradesh, the country’s most sparsely populated state, was one of them. His task: to set up a polling booth in Malogam, a remote hamlet in forested mountains close to the border with China and more than 1,600 miles from the capital of New Delhi.
They set out early the next morning, juddering over potholed roads overlooking a shimmering river valley. By then, darkness had descended. The team walked to the nearest hutment — with no toilet, no electricity, no cellphone signal — to bunk down for the evening. They ate a simple meal of rice and lentils, then spent the night on a bamboo floor above a chicken pen. The next morning, the crowing of roosters woke them up at the crack of dawn: election day.
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