To vote or NOTA vote

 To vote or NOTA vote that is the question. Recently I saw a video clip in which the English Dramatic Society had many dramatis personae including King Charles himself getting on the stage to wax eloquent on their perception of the famous quote from Hamlet, "To be or not be".The stress on different words conveyed a different meaning to the statement, e.g. "To be or not to be is THE question" is totally different from "To be OR not to be is the question". But when it comes to voting there is no dilemma, no confusion just simple straight forward, "To vote or NOTA vote" either ways you go and press the button of the much reviled EVM. Incidentally this time around I made sure the VVPAT was functioning I saw my vote delivered to the symbol which I pressed and also saw the slip fall into the box. That leaves no doubt in my mind about the integrity of the EVM.

We faujis have to sacrifice quite a few of our fundamental rights while in service of the motherland, which many of our countrymen do not quite understand. The first one is ‘Freedom of Speech’ itself and even our Right to exercise our franchise to elect our representative is curtailed as on many an occasions we are deployed on the border, in difficult areas and have been unable to vote. Although technically we were supposed to be receiving our postal ballots, but in my 37 years of service only once I received the postal ballot that too in the 2019 elections. But I am a conscientious citizen and despite the handicaps, have made it a point to vote when I could, once when I was on leave in Indore almost three decades ago, then when the ruling was received that we can register ourselves as voters at our place of posting and cast our votes there itself, I did that in Delhi and Ranchi. I have been a vocal proponent of this policy of registering at our place of posting. Although there were lots of reservations in the minds of our jawans as many of them hail from a rural background that deletion of their names from electoral rolls in their villages is tantamount to being outcasted, their claims to ancestral property and their social standing in the villages would all get compromised. But in a democracy it is the vote bank which decides which way the wind blows and despite such huge numbers we, whether in service or later as veterans do not constitute a vote bank as some castes or minorities are, where political parties bend over backwards to appease them. Without such a demonstrable force to reckon with, our demands are normally put on the back-burner, One Rank One Pension was one such issue till we got some redressal at the hands of the present govt. There are many other issues which are yet to be addressed but without the votes none of these will see the light of the day be rest assured.

This time around when the time came we in our individual capacity ensured that we registered ourselves  and were eagerly awaiting our turn to participate in this festival of democracy as proud citizens. Then came the dampener, when the main rival candidate from Congress withdrew his nomination on the last day leaving the field open for the sitting MP from Indore. Anyone who has played any game would vouch for it, that a walkover does not give the winner any pleasure, the taste of the cake lies in defeating your opponent, like knocking him out in Boxing or getting the star batsman clean bowled by a deadly yorker length ball or a smashing down the line passing shot beating the opponent at the net. Here the fight was reduced to a single horse race and other than crying foul we could do precious little or may be press NOTA and express our disappointment. Thankfully today when I went to vote I realised that we were part of the Dhar-Mhow constituency and here we had the rival parties candidates seriously contesting the elections. Although there was no canvassing, may be being a military cantonment town it was subdued but the fight was very much live. So here we are, my father a very senior octogenarian in the lead, having gone ahead, done our duty, thankfully no NOTA as one of the candidates in my mind deserved my vote.