Worried over very low voter turnout in 1,600 booths coming under the jurisdiction of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, Chief Election Officer, Karnataka, Manoj Kumar Meena has formed special teams to study the reasons behind such low turnout and based on the outcome the election commission will plan a series of special awareness drives in these booths.
Speaking to Deccan Herald, Meena said that there were nearly 9,000 booths across the BBMP jurisdiction and of these 1,600 booths had registered voter turnout way below the city’s average turnout of 52%, registered during 2019 Parliamentary polls.
“Surprisingly, in these booths the voter turnout has been recorded as low as just 25% to 30%, which is almost half the city’s average turnout. Therefore, we want to focus on such weak booths to improve the voter turnout this time,” the CEO said.
Apart from the BBMP jurisdiction, voter turnout has been low in eight of the 28 Lok Sabha seats and 73 Assembly seats across the state.
Of the 73 Assembly segments, 38 are in rural areas which are mostly in Kalyana Karnataka region and 35 are in urban areas in the state.
Among the 35 urban seats, 22 are in Bengaluru and 13 are in Hubballi-Dharwad, Dakshina Kannada, Kalaburagi and other city corporation limits.
Meena added that the election commission was planning to visit these booths at individual level and try to analyse reasons behind such low turnout.
“During last Assembly elections, we had introduced a mobile app to help voters to know the queue in the polling station upfront through the Voter Helpline Mobile app. Thus, voter will get to know his/her convenient time to go to the polling station to exercise his/her franchise. This time around, we plan to create vehicle parking slots as well to help the electorate to park their vehicles and cast their votes. This is besides providing safe RO drinking water, waiting area/shamiyana with chairs to allow them to sit in a shady place, instead of waiting in the hot sun in an open area,” he explained.
Meena added that the app would be updated once every five minutes to allow voters to know exact number of people waiting in booths as well as to know vacant parking slots in the polling booths.
“We are planning to identify vacant parking spaces where at least 15-20 cars can be parked easily for this purpose,” he added.