Delhi/Chandigarh: In September last year, the Election Commission of India (ECI) had directed the Chief Election Officers to identify possible spaces for polling stations in Urban Housing Societies for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Media reports suggested that in cities like Noida, Kanpur, Lucknow, Delhi, Ranchi, Pune, and other parts of Maharashtra, the official process has almost been finalised.In Hyderabad, however, residents objected to allowing people from outside into their gated society. This led to the cancellation of the proposal to set up polling stations inside housing societies.While these methods are aimed at encouraging more people to vote and make the whole election process smoother and more inclusive than ever before, some major concerns remain.No public discussion seems to have happened on this matter, despite this idea being pitched as early as 2012.Segregation and exclusionThis proposal will help some people experience a less crowded polling station at their doorstep. However, it may cater exclusively to a certain class of society, leaving out the rest from accruing its direct benefit.If the intention had been to make the polling process smoother, then densely populated neighbourhoods, slums, squatter colonies, and densely populated urban ghettos should have been the prime target of this move.According to Hindustan Times, ECI told Chief Election Officers that a similar exercise should be also carried out in slum clusters in urban areas. However, it appears that only the housing societies were considered when the surveys and public consultations were done.A remarkable disconnect already exists between the financially solvent urban upper-middle class and the other sections of society. In the last two decades, infrastructures in gated communities, air conditioned malls and cinema halls, and high-end private vehicles have been produced to bolster this disconnect. The common marketplaces from where people across classes used to buy daily groceries and other necessities have probably been the last significant demise of shared public spaces, after the demise of shared public transport and shared government schools and hospitals or parks and playgrounds.The urban upper-middle classes and their children practically share no public space for their daily survival with other social sections/classes.Increasingly, they see sharing space equally with the poorer classes as an obstruction to a smooth and comfortable urban experience.The installation of polling stations within gated communities epitomises the ongoing trend of gentrification and urban segregation.Also read: The Contradictions of the ‘Urban’ in IndiaConsolidation of a class-based vote bankThis measure may also generate a middle and upper-middle-class vote bank in urban India, influencing outcomes in smaller municipal elections. A massive gap in municipal services exists between affluent neighbourhoods and their adjacent slums.The Indian middle class knows how to work through the bureaucracy and the political system beyond the electoral calculus. Usually, they retain their privilege through social networks among government functionaries. The new measure will be an additional boost to their social power.Such an empowerment of the Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) might come at the cost of the adjacent slums and lower-class settlements.These RWAs are often seen to be directly or indirectly involved in squatter colony eviction drives, land grabs, and privatisation of public parks and streets. Establishing polling booths in gated communities could further empower these RWAs to privatise the election process.Moreover, this move could be seen as an effort to address a long-standing self-perception of the urban middle class as the victim of populist politics. It is a common sentiment among the members of this class that taxpayers’ money goes into government doles for the less privileged classes. They tend to believe that their numerical weakness vis-à-vis the rest makes them susceptible to the violation of what ‘belongs’ to them ‘rightfully.’ This, however, is a grossly incorrect perception.Apart from the obvious economic clout, they also enjoy primacy in discourse and policymaking and exert pressure on the state via powerful civil social associations and social contact with elite regime functionaries and the judiciary. The move may have been designed to give this class an electoral prominence as well, which had eroded steadily since the 1970s.Contradiction with the existing ECI guidelinesAnother important concern is the neutrality and sanctity of the election process, which is connected to the neutrality of the space of the polling station.Historically, government premises have been converted into polling stations.The ECI Handbook for Returning Officer 2023 says, “As far as possible, polling stations should be located in schools (Government or aided) and other Government or Semi-Government institutions.”The handbook further says, “The location of the polling stations in private buildings or premises should generally be avoided.”It adds conditions saying that if taking a private premise becomes ‘unavoidable’, then “no watch and ward or other personnel connected with the owner, whether armed or unarmed, should be allowed to remain either at the polling station or within a radius of two hundred meters around it.”“Further, after nominations are filed, it should be ensured that the owner of such a private building is not a contesting candidate or a known sympathizer or worker of any of the candidates at the election,” it says.In order to maintain neutrality, it says: “No polling station should be located in police stations, hospitals, temples or places with religious significance.”Furthermore, to offset the power of the forward castes at the local levels, the Handbook argues, “That separate polling stations have been set up in areas, electors of which are predominantly SC/ST and other weaker sections of the society, and that no such area has been either left out or linked with areas where electors predominantly belong to forward communities.”We argue that the concern of a substantial democracy cannot divert from ensuring equal political rights for the marginalised, which has been an important concern for Indian democracy, at least theoretically.However, the move to set up polling stations in housing societies tilts the power balance in the opposite direction.It is based on the assumption that RWAs of high-rise and housing societies are benign institutions of citizens, which is a gross misassessment of how RWAs are situated within the residents of that apartment complex and in the area.Several ethnographic academic accounts of how the RWAs function in cities such as Delhi have pointed out that often, the RWAs act as Hindu ‘upper’ caste organisations of the house owners, dictatorially regulating the intimate life of the inmates of the gated communities, particularly the tenants, young adults, single women, homosexual couples, etc. Issues have been reported where RWAs have been brutal towards domestic workers and discriminatory towards delivery workers and other service-providing workers by stopping them from using lifts, sofas, or other common places. In many places, the RWAs fix the rent of the properties as well. On the other hand, the tenants do not have similar collectives in these gated communities, resulting in an uneven distribution of class power even within the communities. More often than not, the influential members of the RWAs are members of dominant political parties of the locality and use RWAs for political motives.Thus, accepting these organisations as stakeholders in the electoral process contradicts the principle of neutrality that the prevailing electoral conventions and rules uphold.Also read: Why Simultaneous Polls May Reduce India to ‘World’s Largest Democracy’ Only in NameThe way forwardThe possibility of a more inclusive electoral policy is easy to imagine and materialize. This could be achieved by increasing the number of polling booths while adhering to the ECI’s aforementioned directive.Urban India does not lack government or semi-government premises, schools, and colleges. These premises can be requisitioned to make the polling experience smooth. Each citizen of this country deserves such an experience, and it should not be exclusive to the upper-middle class living in high-rises and gated communities.It is also vital to ensure that inter-state migrant labourers can vote via the postal ballot. They constitute a vast section of the missing voters.Here, the postal ballot provisions have also been extended for NRIs apart from regular sections, but not for migrant workers yet. Overall, voter turnout concerns are being actualised to make voting smooth exclusively for the upper-middle classes.Shreya Ghosh is an independent researcher and activist based in Delhi. She tweets @GhShreya. Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay is an urban historian based in Chandigarh. He tweets @Ritajyoti_B.This essay is part of larger academic work the authors are engaged in and deals with bordering practices in urban spaces. Opinions are personal and do not represent the official voice of the institutions to which they might have been attached.