Teachers are worried about the possible damage to schools that will host polling booths for the Tamil Nadu Assembly election. Candidates’ posters stuck on walls, garbage strewn around, and blackboards damaged are some of the issues teachers have to deal with after the election.
It was in 1951 as India got ready to hold its first general elections with Assembly elections in the State that schools were chosen as easy infrastructure for polling booths.
An article in The Hindu in 1951 noted that the election commissioner resorted to schools as polling booths. Today, the school walls where the photos of candidates and their symbols are pasted get defaced. “We make so much efforts to keep schools a place for learning with fun, with walls painted with animal caricatures and slogans. But every two or three years, an election comes, and our efforts are wasted,” said M. Krishnaveni, principal, Corporation Primary School at Mogappair.
A school in Chennai drew pictures of animals on its walls. “The children were happy to be outside and spend time learning. But the 2019 election came and the walls were stuck with posters. When we peeled off the posters, the paint too came along,” said the principal. Teachers point out that the rooms allotted as booths are cleaned and readied for use by the members of the public. But when they return for the next academic year, the schools are left unclean, with garbage strewn around.
