Wedding hall bookings cancelled

RAJKOT: The first casualty of the elections are marriages scheduled between December 8 and 15, as the municipal corporation which had allotted community halls to various marriage parties have suddenly cancelled the bookings.
As a result of this, people have been running from pillar to post to find an alternative. The plight of those who have already printed the invitation cards was the worst as they have now been forced to change the venue at the eleventh hour.
It is probably for the first time that so many marriages have run into trouble due to elections.The BJP woman morcha had pleaded before the EC to change the polling dates as there were number of marriages scheduled during the elections.
The EC observers have taken over the possessions of these halls for their use resulting in marriage functions being cancelled. Between December 8 and 15 the municipal corporation has cancelled bookings as many as 37 weddings which were to be held in the community halls. The civic body had already kept four halls empty for the EC but with the additional forces coming in the EC demanded four more halls for their use.
The halls which have been vacated include Vinodbhai Sheth hall (Kotharia hall), Gurunanak hall (Junction plot), Avantiben Lodhi hall ( Vijay plot), and Maharana Pratap hall (Kanak Nagar). Bookings for Bhileklavya hall (Bhilwas), Bhagwatipara hall, Ambedkar hall and Valmiki hall were cancelled from November 25 itself.
Kunal, who is to wed on December 9 and had booked the community hall at Kanak Nagar road almost three months in advance, says, "It is nothing but harassment. We have already printed the invitations.
Now it will be another tedious undertaking to find a hall and if no alternate hall is found, I will have to get married on the street near my house which will be an embarrassment."
The manager at Valmiki hall says, "Usually 150 to 200 weddings take place during this time every year and this is for the first time that the hall is being used for election duty. Although, its a pleasure to see a wedding and we get lots of ‘baksheesh’ after the wedding ends but right now it is very hard for me to say how it will turn out. However, lets see who occupies it in the end."