‘Excuse me, can I use your toilet please?’

Nagpur: With voting for Lok Sabha elections next week, polling booth officials, especially women, have highlighted the lack of clean toilets at some booths in Nagpur. Almost all officials TOI spoke to narrated harrowing experiences regarding toilets during their earlier poll stints.“Last time, I was assigned a booth at a big college in Chhaoni, but it was devoid of a proper toilet. The toilet there stank so much, it was unusable,” said a female junior college lecturer, who didn’t wish to be named.

“As polling officials, we have to reach the booth by 5.30am, conduct a mock drill, and stay put at the booth till evening. It’s a high-pressure assignment which has zero scope for error. And all this time, I had to control my urge to go to the toilet, as there wasn’t a proper one. I had to face severe health issues later because of that,” she said.Another woman polling official said, on condition of anonymity, said, “I was assigned a booth at a zilla parishad school at Pardi on Bhandara Road. To my utter dismay, when we reached there in the morning we found there wasn’t any toilet at all. Just imagine what would have been our plight. The whole day I somehow had to manage my urge, and the first thing I did after returning home was go straight to the bathroom to relieve myself.”However, some can’t just control it. A school teacher told TOI, “After an eight-hour ordeal, unable to control any further, I took permission from my presiding officer and went to the neighbouring house and asked the owner, ‘Excuse me, I am a polling booth official, can I use your toilet, because the toilet at the booth is unusable’. I was glad he acceded to my request.”Another woman, who was assigned a booth in a NMC school at Mominpura too had to seek refuge at a nearby household toilet to relieve herself. “Why can’t top officials visit all the booths and see to it that there are proper toilets. In fact, a school or facility where there is no proper toilet shouldn’t be made a polling booth at all,” she said.Prof Rajendra Pahade, who was presiding officer at Dawlameti ZP School booth, near Aathwa Mile, Amravati Road, too echoed the concerns of woman officials. “Lack of toilet facilities is indeed a big problem which we have faced in earlier elections. As the presiding officer I had to go to the booth one day early to oversee all the arrangements. There wasn’t any proper toilet at the booth. Those two days were one of the worst days in my life. Somehow we all managed, but the conditions were indeed harsh.”Zilla parishad chief executive officer Saumya Sharma, who is nodal officer for Model Code of Conduct, said, “To address all such issues, we have taken some meetings. In fact, today I addressed one such meeting and all concerned stakeholders have been instructed to see to it that all assured minimum facilities, which include proper lavatories or urinals too, are available at all the polling booths. Even if there are some booths where such facilities were not available during last polling, this time we will ensure that each and every booth has a proper and usuable toilet for the April 19 elections.”