COIMBATORE: A protest in Tamil Nadu left behind an awkward truth for the election season – outrage, this time, was not over bribery itself but over who didn’t get it. Anger over being left out of the alleged cash-for-votes payout spilled onto a key road in Kottur, a rural pocket about 40km south of Coimbatore and roughly 500km southwest of Chennai, as residents blocked traffic towards nearby Pollachi on Monday.Protesters said that households in nearby areas had received money from a political party before polling on April 23, while their locality was skipped. They demanded “equal treatment, turning a routine election malpractice into a public standoff”.Local police warned that both demanding and accepting money for votes is a criminal offense and told the crowd that cases could follow for unlawful assembly and blocking a public road. Protesters dispersed soon after.District officials said complaints about cash distribution had surfaced, but this appeared to be the first protest driven by exclusion from such handouts. Flying squads and static surveillance teams have been asked to intensify patrolling in the Kottur area to trace the source of the alleged cash distribution.A social activist said that the episode underlined how entrenched the practice has become. “People now see cash for votes as an entitlement,” he said. TNN
