Now that the state assembly elections are over in TN & Kerala, peacefully almost everywhere, we should be congratulating the EC for the way it conducted the elections this time, the tremendous advancements it made over the past few years, the way it strictly enforced rules, the way it made small steps to curb the "cash for vote" activities and would you be not giving the EC a pat in the back when the ruling CM made a hue cry that it was like an undeclared emergency. It's all good. When a few journalists asked questions to Praveen Kumar, the cheif election commissioner of TN, as to what actions would be taken against those charged of violating rules, he promptly and diplomatically said that the election commission's duty is only to report the cases before the judiciary and now the judicial system has to take against those who are being charged. Now whether our judicial system will give a timely verdict or not, only time will have the answer. On the same day when elections happened, the supreme court pronounced judgement on a case where it quashed a MLA's position who had won during the last state elections of TN. What's the point in giving a verdict like this? People will loose faith in this judicial system if we continue to hear verdicts like this. What an example to utter this quote "Justice delayed is justice denied." Imagine how the candidate who had came second would be feeling like.
While on one side, we feel happy about the way the elections were conducted, on the other side there were a few incidents which would seem ridiculous from a developing nation's perspective. I am talking about the celebrities' behaviour. In Kerala, actress Kavya Madhavan came to the electoral booth and tried to enter into it without following a queue. People objected to it, but she tried to justify her stand which I couldn't understand. What made her to think that she can jump the queue? Isn't it an insult to the people who were standing in the queue? Acting is just another profession and that doesn't entitle you to jump queues in a public system. Somebody should remind her about this. Couldn't stand with the people under the sun, she did not cast her vote and left the booth. I heard that the same thing happened for actress Trisha as well in Chennai, but when people objected to her skipping the queue, she did stand in the queue and cast her vote it seems.
The problem lies partly with the people as well for the celebrities to behave like this. I always believed in this ever since I remember that we should not run after the celebrities like mad dogs. But to my dismay, many times I saw people going crazy over celebrities when they come out public, even a non-prime-time daily serial actress enjoys this status, which is the level of celebrity worshiping that our people do. People, for your own pride's sake, please stop doing this. Let them be who they are. Don't build them temples and keep them in sanctum sanctorum.
Now the other embarassing thing was the media frenzy when Rajnikanth came to exercise his democratic right. While he was voting, he was surrounded by a number of camera persons and journalists and he voted amidst a total cacophony. He did not even bother to tell the camera persons to step aside while he was voting. They were covering it from every angle possible. The blame lies on both parties. This frenzy was diplomatically avoided by Kamal Haasan and the ex-deputy CM Stalin as well. Kamal Haasan shouted at the reporters to move farther and Stalin asked his wife Durga to stand away from him so that he could cast his vote in a confidential manner. I wish Rajni too did the same.
Now coming back to celebrities jumping queues, I related this incident with another thing that happens in Tirumala Tirupathi. Until two years ago, I was happily going to Tirumala once in every 2 years, feeling so religious about getting to watch Lord Venkatesha's idol and getting his blessings. Many times we as a family went to special darshans by paying extra money at the counter, and sometimes I heard my friends saying that with the influence of people working in Devastanam boards, they had the Darshan by skipping the entire queue. After a while, when I realized the meaning of an Egalitarian society, I hated this practice and stopped going to Tirumala. I said "No" for the Tirumala visit more than a few times in the past year when my friends or my relatives called me to join with them. It's just based on this thought. A God by virtue should be accessible to all people under equal norms and just because some people have more money doesn't mean that they can access God by shortcuts. This is what happening in Tirupathi and many other Hindu temples that I visited, and I don't wish to go to those places anytime in the future as well with this kind of partialities being practiced at the so called holy places. As a fact of the matter, it is these temples that creates partiality among people. Many section of people are not even entitled to enter into temples even today just because they were born in some caste type.
When is this all gonna end?
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