'If Doda, Poonch, Reasi & Rajouri can, so can Mumbai's Colaba': EC appeals voters to break trend of urban apathy

New Delhi: If Doda, Poonch, Reasi and Rajouri can poll over 70%, then Colaba in Mumbai can go beyond 40% -- Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said on Tuesday as he appealed to voters in urban constituencies to come out in large numbers to vote during the upcoming Maharashtra Assembly election.

Announcing the schedule for Maharashtra and Jharkhand, he said the Election Commission has kept the polling days in both the states mid-week so that more people vote, as it has been seen in the past that voters tend to club weekends with polling days to get out of the city for holidays.

He said the EC would be conducting a special meeting of the municipal commissioners and other concerned officials in a week's time to get urban voters out to vote. 

"We are really concerned about urban apathy. We want to appeal to all voters in urban areas to come and vote. It is not a healthy trend which is reflected. Look at Gurgaon, look at Faridabad, recently, last election Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, Bengaluru South, Gandhinagar, Colaba, Pune, Thane, all have polled much below state averages of each state," he said.

Referring to urban apathy, Kumar cited the case of Bengaluru South where polling was 47.5% while state average was 73.84%. He also referred to figures for Gurugaon, Faridabad, Jubilee Hills and other cities to buttress his point.

"We saw Doda voting at 72%, Reasi 74%, Poonch and Rajouri voting over 70%, if they can go beyond 70%, Colaba can also go beyond 40%," he said. In the 2019 Assembly polls, the voter turnout was only 40.1%.

In Maharashtra, he said turnout in 62 of 64 urban assembly constituencies were less than the state average in 2019, as was the case in Lok Sabha elections. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Maharashtra's Parliamentary seats Kalyan, Pune, Thane, Mumbai North-Central, Mumbai South and Mumbai South-Central were among the top ten urban seats with lowest turnout, he said.

Kumar said in the recent Haryana election, there were booths in the "poshest" areas of Gurugram and Faridabad where voting was less than 20%