‘Pushed, slapped, denied vote’: Booths captured in Maharashtra’s Beed, voters and Opposition allege
In a letter to the Election Commission, the INDIA alliance candidate has accused the ruling alliance of capturing booths in 38 villages.
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On May 13, Nana Naukare, a farmer who lives in the Maharashtrian city of Parli, went to his designated polling booth in Sharda Nagar’s Vivek Vardhini primary school to cast his vote. His finger was inked but before he could reach the ballot machine, he was asked to leave by “some men who were not election officers”. “Dhakke maar ke nikal diya,” he told Scroll. They pushed me out of the booth.
Naukare said he did not make more attempts to get to the ballot machine fearing for the safety of his family. “My family and I left,” he said, adding that an election officer was present on the spot but could do nothing. “We did not want to take any risk.”
Several voters across Parli, one of six assembly segments in Beed Lok Sabha constituency, recounted similar experience of being denied their right to vote to Scroll. Opposition workers alleged that voters were threatened by party workers of the Mahayuti alliance – the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Ajit Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party.
Bajrang Sonawane, a leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) who standing for election from Beed, in a letter to Election Commission alleged that booths in 33 villages in Parli assembly, three villages...
