No road, tribal villagers carry elderly man to polling booth

For residents of Jeelugulova hamlet in Ravikamatam mandal of Andhra Pradesh, reaching a polling booth meant carrying an 80-year-old man for nearly three kilometres in a makeshift doli. The journey, undertaken to help Korra Gasanna exercise his franchise, also became a protest against the absence of a motorable road connecting their hamlet to the outside world.

Jeelugulova, which falls under Chimalapadu panchayat, is inhabited by the Kondhu community, a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG). Residents say they have waited decades for basic road connectivity, even though nearly eight decades have passed since Independence.

The villagers said 18 of them had recently been enrolled as voters for the first time. While expressing gratitude to the officials who facilitated their enrolment, they decided to use the occasion to highlight the difficulties caused by the lack of road connectivity.

Gasanna, who is unable to walk, was carried by young voters in a makeshift doli to the polling booth at Chimalapadu, nearly three kilometres away, local representatives said.

For the villagers, the effort was both an exercise of their newly acquired voting rights and a reminder to elected representatives and officials that access to basic infrastructure remains a distant reality in their hamlet.

“Our message is simple. We are ready to travel miles to vote, but the government must provide us with a road,” the villagers said.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) district committee member Korra Balaraju, K. Govinda Rao, and Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency (ZPTC) candidate Singer Palasiya were among those who took part in the initiative.

The villagers hope that their journey to the polling booth, particularly the effort to carry an elderly resident, will draw the administration’s attention to their long-pending demand for road connectivity.