Migrated from Pakistan in the year 1982, Rajender Thakur waited 37 years to cast his first every vote today. Like Thakur, nearly 25 other migrants from Pakistan who recently got the Indian citizenship for the first time exercised their right to vote on Monday. 

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"For the last 37 years in India, I could only discuss politics but today for the first time, I realised that I have become complete Indian after casting my vote," 52-year-old Thakur told DNA after casting his vote in the Maval Lok Sabha constituency. 

There are several people from the Sindhi community who had migrated from Pakistan and settled in Pimpri-Chinchwad area here. However, for a long time, they had to stay on long term visa as they did not have the citizenship of India. However, the Pune district collector Naval Kishore Ram expedited their applications and recently gave 45 of them citizenship of the country. 

Along with the permanent citizenship, this group of people also got their right to participate in the democratic process of the election when their names were included in the electoral list. 

"I was only 15 years old when I migrated from Karachi to India for better future. After the migration, I lived here on Long term Visa (LTV) for 37 years where we had to renew LTV every two years. However, recently I got the Indian citizenship and today, I am happy that I became part of the country's democratic process also," Thakur said. 

Dr Vijay Bulani, another migrant from Pakistan like Thakur also exercised his right to vote. "Recently, I received the Indian citizenship and our names were also enrolled immediately in the voting list. Today, I was very happy to be a part of the election process of my country which has given me everything in life," Bulani said.

Voting for 17 seats in Maharashtra, spread across Mumbai metropolitan region and parts of northern and western parts of the state with some 3.11 crore voters and 323 candidates in the fray, was held on Monday.