Wagholi residents deal with voters' list woes

Wagholi residents deal with voters' list woes

Pune: The residents of housing societies in Wagholi area are facing a strange problem while registering their names in the voters' list. The new inhabitants of Wagholi feel that original residents have purposely held over this process in order to limit the scope of new voters in getting their civic issues solved.

Harcharnjeet Singh Butalia of Wagholi Housing Societies Association said, "We are trying hard to get our names registered. This is important for us in order to have our say in a democratic process, as it will help us to solve our civic problems fast. There is high rejection rate of our applications. In our society, more than 80 people have applied but the names of only 8 people have appeared on the list. This revelation came after four months of filing the applications. We had to file the applications again and the status of it is not yet known."

It may be recalled that around 10 years ago, the population of Wagholi was around 20,000, but due to rapid residential development in this area, a large number of people shifted in the suburb. This migration altered the demography of this village, which is likely to be merged in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) limits in coming years. The sources claimed that if all newcomers get their names registered in the voters' list, they are likely to dominate the electoral politics of this area, which is a part of Shirur Assembly constituency. Currently, not a single member of the housing society is a member of Wagholi Grampanchyat.

Considering this, the residents of over 100 co-operative housing societies are currently struggling with the authorities for solving their various civic issues. Meanwhile, they are not getting any response from the government authorities like Pune Metropolitan Regional Development. On the other hand, they are not getting their names registered.

Another resident from Wagholi said, "The government appealed people to cast their votes but in our case, we are struggling a lot to register our names on the list." He added that the worst part of the problem is that our forms were filled several times, but when voters list gets published, only a handful of the names make it to the final list. 

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