Manju Shettar By Express News Service BENGALURU: Women and senior citizens came out in huge numbers to the polling booths of KR Puram Legislative Assembly on Thursday. The booths located in KR Puram, Medahalli, TC Palya and Triveni Nagar areas of the constituency, in total, saw a voter turnout of 43.25%. This was low, in comparison to that in 2018, which was 53.08%. In KR Puram, Karnataka Public school had 19 polling booths, including a sakhi booth — a polling booth specially for women. An 87-year-old Bibi Jaan and a 92-year-old Suryanarayana, came along with their family and voted. Dilshad, who brought Bibi Jaan to the polling booth, said, “She had never missed a chance to vote since she turned 21. Three of our family members also joined her as they were motivated by her spirit.” Vidyavathi, who came to the polling booth along with her father T S Suryanarayana, said they preferred coming to the booth in the afternoon as there are no long queues at the time. When they arrived, KSRP personnel assisted Suryanarayana to sit on a wheelchair and make him comfortable while he waited for his turn to vote. Srinivas said, “We see that people with physical disabilities are very sportive, and some even refused wheelchairs offered to them. It is a motivation for all of us to exercise our rights.” The election officials had kept wheelchairs at the gates of the polling booths and more than 100 elderly people used these with two staffers deployed to assist them.BJP candidate Byarathi Basavaraj came to Medahalli polling booth Thursday morning to cast his vote. Ready to vote for money A group of women were looking for party workers so they could show them their voter cards and tell them that they would vote if they were given money. They said that on Wednesday they waited in their houses till midnight, after they heard that party workers were distributing money in the locality. However, they were disappointed that no one came to give them money. Meanwhile, there was a rumour doing the rounds that cash was being distributed near Kalakere for voters, but no officials confirmed it.

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