Date:18/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/18/stories/2008111855471000.htm

National

Unsung heroes of Ladakh election

Praveen Swami

Poll staff made extraordinary sacrifices to enable voters to exercise franchise

. — Photo: Praveen Swami

Spirited show: A remote polling station in Thugsey Gompa, perched above the Tso Kar lake in the Leh constituency. Thugsey Gompa’s six registered voters braved -20 degree Celsius to vote in Monday’s elections

THUGSEY GOMPA: If it wasn’t for the extraordinary sacrifices of a small group of election workers, the six women and men registered to vote at Ladakh’s smallest polling station would never have had the opportunity to exercise their franchise.

Last week, the staff assigned to the 5,000-metre polling station of Thugsey Gompa were bussed into the hamlet of Samad and left to fend for themselves. The men huddled together in a single room, fighting off temperatures that fell to minus-30 degrees Celsius at night, without heating, special cold-weather clothing, and any form of communications to call for help in the event of an emergency.

Incredibly, they even had to warm the batteries of the electronic voting machines which are not designed to function in Ladakhs extreme cold by sheltering them inside their sleeping bags.

By design or otherwise, the poll-staff assigned to Thugsey Gompa — all drawn from government personnel stationed in Ladakh represented Jammu and Kashmir’s religious and ethnic diversity.

Leh-based high-school teacher Surinder Singh, from Kathua in Jammu, lived and worked alongside Abdul Hamid Mir, a soil-conservation expert from Srinagar who is working in Nyoma. Both men were joined by Urgyen Tsering, a school teacher from Leh, and Tashi Gyaltsen, a cooperatives administrator from Nubra.

Even the two policemen assigned to protect the Thugsey Gompa polling station — Riyaz Ahmad, from Budgam in Kashmir, and Sonam Thobgyes, from Chushul, on the India-China frontier in eastern Ladakh — came from different ethic-religious backgrounds.

During their time in Thugsey Gompa, the six men learned to respect distinct religious and ethnic practices. “We only cooked food that all of us could eat,” Mr. Mir recalls, “and shared everything we had, from blankets to extra woollens. It was an educative experience; everyone in our State should be made to go through it!” However, Mr. Singh said, current government rules make working on elections a punishment.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has said that all poll employees will be paid a flat Rs.10,000 with no indexing for hardship.

Before being despatched to Thugsey Gompa, though, the six men together received Rs.3,040 for food, fuel and shelter — not enough, they noted, to keep a heater running in their one-room accommodation. Neither of the policemen had received any allowance for food, Mr. Singh said, and were just expected to fend for themselves. “Of course, we couldn’t let them do that, so we shared what we had.”