Coimbatore: A protest in Tamil Nadu left a strange truth for the election season – this time the outrage was not over bribery, but over who didn’t get it. Anger over being excluded from cash-for-vote payments spilled over onto a major road in Kottoor, a rural area about 40 km south of Coimbatore and about 500 km southwest of Chennai, as residents blocked traffic towards nearby Pollachi on Monday.Protesters said that families in nearby areas had received money from a political party ahead of voting on April 23, while their area was spared. He demanded “equal treatment, turning a routine election malpractice into a public standoff.”Local police warned that both soliciting and accepting money for votes is a criminal offense and told the crowd that cases could be filed for unlawful assembly and blocking a public road. The protesters dispersed soon after.District officials said complaints about cash distribution had surfaced, but this appeared to be the first protest prompted by being excluded from such distribution. Flying squads and static surveillance teams have been asked to intensify patrolling in the Kottoor area to trace the source of the alleged cash distribution.A social activist said the episode underlines how entrenched the practice has become. “People now see cash in exchange for votes as a right,” he said. news network