Lucknow, March 7: Malti Devi is all of 32 but she has never voted in her life or even been invited to cast one. Nor has Amisha Begum, who is hopping mad at the vagaries of the electoral system in the BJP’s brave new feel-good world.

“We will have to storm the polling booth if we are not allowed this time,” raged Amisha, a sex worker of Agra’s Badshahi slum. So did Malti from Natpurwa area of Lucknow district.

Nearly 5,000 sex workers in the red-light area Malti lives in and 6,000 in Amisha’s will not be able to vote in the general elections because their names are not included in Uttar Pradesh’s electoral rolls. In other parts of the state, 9,000 will suffer the same fate, reports our special correspondent.

The Bharatiya Patita Uddhar Sabha, an organisation of sex workers, has shot off a petition to the Election Commission in Delhi alleging that a large chunk of Uttar Pradesh’s population was not being allowed to exercise their franchise.

It has urged the poll panel to ensure that all sex workers are empowered to vote as in Bengal, Kerala and Maharashtra.

No health worker or poll official has ever visited these areas, according to member A.B. Sahay, but the central election office was quick to take action. It directed the Uttar Pradesh election commission to update its voter rolls so that sex workers were not denied their right.

State election commissioner Vijay Sharma immediately set the ball rolling but it is unlikely the sex workers will be able to cast their ballots as registration of voters ended last Friday. A spokesman of the state commission said it was impossible to include the names in the little time given.

But the sabha is not bending. Screaming that such discrimination was unimaginable in a civilised world, it has demanded that a fresh date --- March 20 --- be fixed as the last date for voter registration. It has also threatened to take the issue to court.

According to the sabha, over 23 lakh sex workers across India do not have voting rights.