Commoners on par with VIPs in this festival

Instead, they rubbed shoulders with the ordinary citizens, and that too without the security blanket provided by personal security officers. Be it the Chief Minister, the Leader of Opposition or Kollywood stars, the ordinary citizens pushed the elite behind on the queue. The cream of the society, who are conventionally used to getting things done over phone and through their agents, were made to experience the life of an ordinary tax payer on Thursday.

The Election Commission of India seems to have learnt its lessons from the past. The commission has increased the height of the partition kept to ‘hide’ the ballot units at polling booths, ostensibly, to prevent media from finding the candidate preferred by ‘star’ voters. Desperate attempts made by the camerapersons proved futile as the high partition prevented them from recording Superstar Rajinkanth while he pressed the button in the EVM at the Stella Maris college. A few others were cautious enough to take the help of polling officials to stop desperate lensmen from ‘exposing’ their political 

affiliation. 

Youngsters did not show as much interest in exercising their democratic right at polling booths in the city as they did when venting their anger on social media. They did not show up in good numbers during most part of day in the three Chennai constituencies, most notably in Central Chennai. Curiously, not all parties were unhappy with the disillusionment of the young voters. While the Dravidian majors took no major offence, a few fledgling political outfits were irked by this. The surprise arrival of a few youngsters at a polling booth in South Chennai even turned out to be a joke among party workers who were in the vicinity.

Comedian Vadivelu might have gone off the grid from Kollywood in the recent years, but that did not prevent him from delivering rib-ticklers on polling day. An otherwise ‘dull’ and event-free polling was made entertaining in Virugambakkam constituency after the ‘Vaigai Puyal’ entered a booth in Saligramam. Vadivelu refreshed public memory of his dancing skills when he briefly shook his legs and jumped from behind the ballot unit inside a polling booth. The actor, who was a crowd puller for the DMK in 2011 Assembly polls, left media persons in splits after casting his vote. Almost every query posed by the reporters was given a comic retort by the actor, who consciously avoided engaging their political questions.