Mira Mitra, who turned 90 this January, wouldn’t miss voting, even if that meant flying down from Mumbai.

A bad back and advancing age don’t bother her so much as “the general decline in political discourse”.

Mira arrived in Calcutta on Friday night. “She was up and ready dot at 7am though we arrived quite late last night,” said daughter Nilanjana, who accompanied her to the booth at the Institute of Jute Technology, off Ballygunge Phari.

“There is not much to choose from,” Mira said when asked who she voted for. “But I have to do my duty. And I will do it till I live,” she solemnly declared as she trudged down the few stairs from the polling station, declining the wheelchair on offer.

For her age, Mira is agile. She was here for the Assembly elections in 2021, too. “I moved from the city in 2016. My daughter would no longer allow me to live alone here,” she said. But she comes back for every election.

What makes her take that effort given her age? The Sunny Park resident said: “Well, I am going to have my say in who forms the government. I have not missed any election since I was eligible to vote. I would go to the polling booth with my husband when he was alive, then with my daughter and, after she shifted to Mumbai, with my neighbour in the building who is like my second daughter.”

She wants a clean, corruption-free government. She keeps herself abreast of the developments in her city. She is a regular subscriber to a Bengali language newspaper in Mumbai. “I cannot read online. I need to have a paper in my hand,” she said.

“Things seem to be going from bad to worse. The poor are bearing the brunt of price rise, joblessness. The middle class isn’t doing too well either. We don’t seem to be making much headway in terms of growth, development or anything,” she said.