EC drive to end urban apathy to voting fails to make a difference

The Election Commission’s campaign to end the jinx of urban reluctance to take part in the festival of democracy has apparently failed to yield much in Wednesday’s election.

The EC has not yet released the final turnout percentage for any of the 224 assembly constituencies of Karnataka. But the latest estimates available with the commission have revealed that the turnout continued to be low in and around Bengaluru.

While 53.47 per cent and 57 per cent of the voters had exercised their franchise in the BBMP (North) and Bengaluru (Urban) in 2018, the turnout percentages in the two areas this year have slightly gone down to 52.88 per cent and 56.98 per cent respectively.

Only marginal increases in turnout have been recorded in BBMP (South) and BBMP (Central) districts, where 52.80% and 55.45% of the electors cast votes on Wednesday. The two districts had recorded 51.98 per cent and 55.18 per cent turnout, respectively, in 2018.

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The state’s overall turnout this year has been estimated to be 72.82 per cent, higher than 72.44 per cent in 2018 and 71.83 per cent in 2013.

The reluctance of the urban voters is one of the problems the EC had identified while planning this year’s polls in Karnataka. The commission has been running campaigns to encourage urban voters to participate in the festival of democracy.

The poll panel had roped in academic institutions, information technology companies, residents’ welfare associations in Bengaluru and other urban centres in Karnataka to raise awareness among voters and encourage them to turn up at polling stations.

The EC had deliberately scheduled the polling for the elections on a Wednesday (May 10), so that the reluctant urban voters could not take advantage of the voting-day holiday by clubbing it with weekend breaks and going out on a tour, instead of turning up to exercise their franchise.

The commission has, of late, been taking note of the reluctance of voters in the cities to go to polling stations and cast votes, not only in Karnataka, but also in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh as well as in other states.

The commission noted that while the overall poll percentage in the Himachal Pradesh elections in November 2022 was 75.78%, it was just 62.53% in the state capital Shimla.

Similarly, while the overall turnout during the December 2022 elections in Gujarat was 64.33 per cent, it was down to 57.12 per cent in Rajkot and 47.86 per cent in Gandhidham.

Nine of the 20 parliamentary constituencies with the lowest turnout in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections were urban – Hyderabad, Patna Sahib, Secunderabad, Kalyan, Pune, Thane, Mumbai South, Kanpur and Allahabad.