Mushri Tadingi, 45, sits on a charpoy outside his just-constructed concrete house, at an altitude of 1,200 metres in the heart of the Eastern Ghats along the border of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. As the sun beats down, relentless in a month that the meteorological department forecasts will have above-normal heatwave days, he contemplates his voting strategy on May 13, for the upcoming fourth phase of India’s Lok Sabha elections.
“In the morning I will cast my vote in Odisha, and in the afternoon, I will go to the Andhra Pradesh polling booths,” says Mushri, hailing from Madkar village in the Kotia panchayat that Odisha claims is part of the State’s Koraput district and Andhra claims is part of their Parvathipuram Manyam district. He is nervous about how he is going to do this though, considering the indelible ink will be marked on his finger once he votes the first time.
As 96.8 crore Indian citizens participate in one of the world’s most extensive elections, 5,510 voters will go to nine polling booths established by Odisha and three by Andhra, in the predominantly tribal Kotia gram panchayat. The jurisdiction of the area is under dispute between Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in the Supreme Court, and residents are set to vote differently from the rest of the population, with the anomaly of voting in both States. The States claim 21 unsurveyed villages across about 15 kilometres, with both undertaking infrastructure development and implementing social security schemes.
