Muzaffarnagar riot camp refugees start getting voter ID cards

LIGARH/MUZAFFARNAGAR: They have been angry, agonized and dispossessed. And they didn't even have voter cards using which they could articulate their rage.

But all that might change for many of those rendered homeless by the Muzaffarnagar riots last year. NGOs working overtime and a local administration that has been hard at it have ensured that a chunk of the refugees who had lost all their documents, including voter ID cards, will be equipped by the end of this month to cast their votes.

At least 25 people received their voter cards on Monday, and another 3,200 have been guaranteed they will get it by the end of the month, well in time for the polls that begin in April.

" Forms 6 and 8(A) needed for the cards have been made available," said Muzaffarnagar ADM Inder Mani Tripathi. "This brings a sliver of hope to the displaced who had lost all hope of being able to exercise their right this election."

However, for a bulk of the displaced — estimates put the total around 50,000, a substantial chunk of them without voter cards — it would be a race against time to get the document before the region goes to polls on April 10. "It will be very sad if the people who suffered in the riots do not get to exercise their right to vote," said Faraz Badr Rizvi from Jagriti Seva Sansthan, an NGO that is helping in the mission.

A large percentage of the refugees, a majority of them Muslims, is perceived to be disenchanted with the SP government. The way they vote this time, coupled with the empathy of community members outside the belt and across UP, could well be a game changer for political parties in the fray for the LS polls.

Mohammad Yameen, who has been living in a relief camp for months now, said, "If the SP government really wanted to help us, we would not have been surviving like this."