Thursday, November 28, 2019

Priest for Whom EC Set Up a Polling Station Inside Gir Forest Passes Away

Bharatdas Darshandas was probably the only person for whose single vote an entire polling station would be set up.
02/Nov/2019
New Delhi: The priest of the Bangangeshwar Mahadev temple in Gir forest, for whom the Election Commission used to set up a polling station inside the woods, passed away in a hospital in Rajkot, Gujarat on Friday. Bharatdas Darshandas had been ailing for some time and died of renal complications four days after he was hospitalised. He was 69.
Ahead of almost every election for the past two decades, Darshandas would be written about by the media. He was probably the only person for whose single vote an entire polling station would be set up.
In view of the law demanding that no voter should be required to walk more than two kilometres, the EC used to deploy a five-six person polling team for Darshandas in every election. The polling station used to be set up deep inside the Gir forest for him. The area fell under the Una sssembly constituency.
Incidentally, the Gir forest national park is the largest habitat of the Asiatic lion and was, as per the 2015 census, home to 523 of them.
To enable Darshandas to cast his vote during the Lok Sabha elections this year, the EC had set up a polling station at Banej, a forest outpost near the temple. The temple is an old Shiva pilgrimage site.
While the EC would facilitate the priest’s vote since the other nearest station was about 20 km away, Darshandas, who usually donned dark sunglasses and a saffron sarong, would oblige by always turning up to vote.
The curious case of Darshandas, and the arrangements made for him, also found a mention in an episode of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monthly radio talk show Mann Ki Baat.
The news of Darshandas’s death was broken by his brother, Haridas, who is the head of the Jamadgnni Ashram in Gir Somnath.
Haridas stated that Darshandas had been ailing for the last five years and underwent treatment in several hospitals.
He said that Darshandas was a diabetic and recently both his kidneys failed. He was admitted to Christ Hospital on Monday but had to be put on ventilator on Thursday night as his situation deteriorated. He breathed his last at around 3 pm on Friday.

https://thewire.in/government/priest-for-whom-ec-set-up-a-polling-station-inside-gir-forest-passes-away

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