Residents of TNUHDB tenements in Chennai’s outer areas travel 30 km to vote

Chennai residents in resettlement sites face challenges in voting due to outdated voter IDs and lack of awareness.

Around half-past-two in the afternoon on Friday, P. Jaya returned from Thousand Lights, where she works as a domestic help, to her residence in the city’s largest resettlement site in Perumbakkam.

Having finally received her new voter ID since moving to Perumbakkam in 2017, she was looking forward to casting her vote. However, her enthusiasm was not shared by several residents in the tenements of the Tamil Nadu Urban Habitat Development Board (TNUHDB) in Perumbakkam, Semmenchery, and Kannagi Nagar, whose voter IDs still carried their old addresses.

Many of the people The Hindu spoke to were not aware of the procedure to change the address on their voter IDs and several complained that the change was not carried out despite them applying for it. 

Mercy, president of Block 1 (new) Residents’ Welfare Association, said camps held by the government to help people apply for voter IDs were sparse. “They are conducted on weekends so that people who go to work are home, but there is no announcement. Many end up not knowing about the camps at all,” she said.

According to Mary Stella, a resident of Block Q (old) in the Perumbakkam tenements, only about 70 members in the 187 tenements had voter IDs with the TNUHDB’s tenement address. “We are finding it very difficult to exercise our own democratic right,” she said.

While some persons were able to travel as far as 30 km to cast their votes, several could not make the trip owing to practical difficulties. Venkatesh, who lives in the Ezhil Nagar resettlement colony in Thoraipakkam for a decade, went all the way to Teynampet to cast his vote.

However, Beulah Ponnusamy, a resident of the Perumbakkam tenements, said her polling station was still in Aminjikarai and she could not make the trip this year. Similarly, Uma, who moved to the Semmenchery TNUHDB resettlement area about four years ago, could not travel to Nungambakkam to vote. Poor bus services on election day also added to the difficulties, residents added.