Groom, family walk 28 km for wedding due to drivers' strike in Odisha
Bhubaneswar, Mar 17: A groom and his family members had to walk 28 kilometres to reach the bride's village in Odisha's Rayagada district for the wedding, as they could not arrange a vehicle due to the drivers' strike.
They walked all night on Thursday from Sunakhandi panchayat under Kalyansinghpur block to reach Dibalapadu village where they tied the knot on Friday.
A video showing the groom and his family members including a few women walking at night went viral on social media.
"No transport was available due to the drivers' strike. We walked all night to reach the village. We had no other option," one of the groom's family members said.
The marriage was solemnised on Friday morning. But the groom and his family members stayed at the bride's house, waiting for the drivers' association to withdraw the strike so that they can return home.
The Driver Ekta Mahasangh has launched the indefinite strike across the state from Wednesday demanding social welfare measures like insurance, pension, formation of a welfare board and others.
The strike by the drivers of commercial vehicles in Odisha was on Friday put on hold for 90 days following an assurance by the state government that all their demands would be fulfilled.
The announcement by the Drivers' Ekta Mahasangh came barely a few hours after Chief Secretary P K Jena and DGP S K Bansak appealed to the striking drivers to withdraw the stir.
The strike by over two lakh drivers has hit the normal life for which people including office goers and tourists remained standard at different places. This has also resulted in price rise of essential commodities.
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SIR in Gujarat: More than 17 lakh deceased voters found on electoral rolls
Ahmedabad (PTI): The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Gujarat has revealed that more than 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the existing voter list across the state, a release by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has stated.
According to the release issued on Thursday, the SIR exercise started in Gujarat on November 4 with booth-level officers (BLOs) distributing enumeration forms in their designated areas.
The campaign will continue till December 11.
"In the last one month, enumeration forms have been distributed to more than five crore voters registered in the 2025 electoral roll. In most of the 33 districts, 100 per cent of the distribution has been completed. Work on digitising the returned forms is currently underway. So far, the digitisation work has been completed in 12 out of 182 assembly constituencies," it said.
These include Dhanera and Tharad of Banaskantha district, Limkheda and Dahod (ST) of Dahod district, Bayad of Aravalli district, Dhoraji, Jasdan and Gondal of Rajkot district, Keshod of Junagadh district, Mehmadabad of Kheda district, Khambhat of Anand district and Jalalpore of Navsari district.
Dang district is at the forefront in this work with 94.35 per cent digitisation of the counting forms, said the release.
"During this exercise, it was revealed that 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the electoral roll across the state. More than 6.14 lakh voters were found absent from their addresses. It has been noticed that more than 30 lakh voters have permanently migrated," the release said.
BLOs found more than 3.25 lakh voters in the "repeated" category, which means that their names figured at more than one place, the release stated.
