Author: Manoj Joshi
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 26, 2002
The largely incident-free second
round of the Jammu and Kashmir elections will make Fakre Alam, a school
teacher from Barabanki, a happy man. He plans to abandon the government-supplied
bullet-proof vest and 'patka', an armoured headband that passes for a helmet
in Kashmir, in the next phase.
Me Alam is one of hundreds of polling
officers who have been imported into the state to ensure a free and fair
elections. "We were very worried when we first came here, but now we realise
things are not that bad," says his companion, Ram Pal Singh Tomar, who
works at the horticulture department in Meerut.
Constable Lal Bahadur Singh, who
was guarding a polling booth at Arigam, is more stoic. He has served in
Tripura for three years fighting insurgents, and now he is in Kashmir.
"We have had no rest," he says, "But I suppose that's part of the job."
It's people like Alam, Tomar and Singh who are the unsung heroes of the
success that the elections have had till now.
The poll officers have come from
all walks of life and have lived with the CRPF or the Army for the past
month or so. Most have not tasted the superlative Kashmiri cuisine and
have had to content themselves with the camp 'dal roti.' "But last night
we managed to have a feast," says Syed Mohammed Zuhair, a plant protection
officer from Lucknow. "My Kashmiri colleagues provided us some 'halal kababs'
which we could not have in the camp." Comparisons are inevitable. Aridaman
Jain, a Meerut draughtsman, says that the polling fervour he saw in the
Khansahib constituency "was better than Meerut," adding that polling in
the forenoon was at the rate of 100 an hour.
But there is little doubt that the
toughest job is being done by the paramilitary, the CRPF in particular.
Lalit Kumar, a constable from Uday Nagar in Delhi, said he joined the force
in 1998 and was in the Valley for three years. As soon as he returned to
the plains, he was sent to Jodhpur as part of the Army deployment after
the December 13 Parliament attack. Thereafter, his unit was sent to Gujarat
for the rath yatra, and now he is back in the Valley "We have had no leave
for the past 12 months," he said.
The risks may appear minimal for
the polling personnel and less so for the CRPF jawan, but they are there
nevertheless because terrorists are around and an attack can come with
horrific suddenness. Nothing that the government has on offer can compensate
either them or their families for lost lives and limbs.
