Regional

First-time women voters in Goa get teddy bears

Published

8 years ago

February 5, 2017

Panaji: Pink teddy bears, may well have a justified a slot on the altar of participatory democracy.According to the state’s top poll official, Kunal, a unique experiment conducted during the February 4 state assembly elections, which involved giving away 600 teddy bears to first-time women voters across Goa, had paid dividends.The snuggly teddy bears were given to the early-visiting first-time voters in over 40 model polling booths, one in each of the 40 assembly constituencies in Goa, which went to poll on Saturday.

“As a trend, our pink polling stations got two per cent more voting than the average polling rate in all the other regular polling booths. People received the idea well,” Kunal said.In the elections conducted on Saturday, voting was conducted in 1,642 polling stations across the state.According to provisional figures released by the Chief Electoral Officer late on Saturday, Goa saw around 83 per cent voting.

The pink polling booths, in which the teddy bears were given away, appeared to come straight out of a birthday party with a pink pastel theme, with its pink walls, pink balloons, pink table cloths, even with most of the women poll officials wearing pink clothes.A women’s writers had however criticised the giving away of teddy bears and the pink polling booths, claiming it pandered to gender stereotypes. But for most debutant woman voters, receiving a teddy bear from poll officials was a touching gesture.

“We felt good. It was in a way encouraging us to vote,” Ameena Alam, a voter from the Colvale legislative assembly constituency in North Goa, who received a teddy bear,.Incidentally, first-time male voters also received a gift of appreciation, although much less snuggly, in form of a pen.

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What monkey fled with a bag containing evidence in it: Read full story

Published

2 years ago

May 5, 2022

Aaj Ki Khabar Desk Team

The court, generally, considers a person who commit a crime and the one who destroys the evidence, as criminals in the eyes of law. But what if an animal destroys the evidence of a crime committed by a human.

In a peculiar incident in Rajasthan, a monkey fled away with the evidence collected by the police in a murder case. The stolen evidence included the murder weapon (a blood-stained knife).

The incident came to light when the police appeared before the court and they had to provide the evidence in the hearing.

The hearing was about the crime which took place in September 2016, in which a person named Shashikant Sharma died at a primary health center under Chandwaji police station. After the body was found, the deceased’s relatives blocked the Jaipur-Delhi highway, demanding an inquiry into the matter.

Following the investigation, the police had arrested Rahul Kandera and Mohanlal Kandera, residents of Chandwaji in relation to the murder. But, when the time came to produce the evidence related to the case, it was found that the police had no evidence with them because a monkey had stolen it from them.

In the court, the police said that the knife, which was the primary evidence, was also taken by the monkey. The cops informed that the evidence of the case was kept in a bag, which was being taken to the court.

The evidence bag contained the knife and 15 other important evidences. However, due to the lack of space in the malkhana, a bag full of evidence was kept under a tree, which led to the incident.