Twenty-seven members of Pune family vote together

The motto of the Bhosale family from Pune's Rasta Peth area can be described as 'the family that votes together, stays together'.

Continuing a tradition, 27 members of the family voted in the Lok Sabha election Tuesday.

While the eldest among them was 95-year-old Parvatibai Bhosale, the youngest was her 26-year-old grandson Niranjan.

The family lives in a 'waada', a specimen of old-style architecture for which Pune was once famous. They walked to the nearby polling centre in a procession Tuesday morning.

"We are six brothers, and ours is a joint family. In every election we step out together and exercise our franchise," said 60-year-old Jaysingh Bhosale, himself a former corporator.

For the last few days, they were also creating awareness about importance of voting in their neighbourhood, he said.

"The eldest voter in our family is our mother, who is 95 years old. Despite being wheelchair-bound, she makes sure that she casts vote in every election," he said.

Parvatibai told PTI that she would be happy if people were inspired by her family and went out and voted.

The BJP's Girish Bapat, a state minister, is pitted against Congress' Mohan Joshi in Pune.