Turnout in Sunday’s elections to the municipal corporations remained almost stagnant with less than 1% increase from the last civic elections in 2012.
According to the Delhi State Election Commission (SEC), in the 270 wards that went to polls, the total turnout was 53.58%, with a total of 71.39 lakh votes polled. In 2012, the turnout had been 53.22%, said Delhi State Election Commissioner S. K. Srivastava.
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Like in 2012, east Delhi on Sunday saw the highest turnout with 56.08%, followed by north Delhi at 54.08% and south Delhi at 51.59%.
Voter turnout
The highest polling in east, north and south Delhi was seen in the Sunder Nagri (63.92%), Bakhtawarpur (68.78%) and Madipur (61.51%) wards respectively.
In east Delhi, the lowest turnout was in Shakarpur at 48.78%; in north Delhi, in Peeragarhi at 45.79% and in south Delhi in Lado Sarai at 39.14%.
Mr. Srivastava said the SEC had tried to increase the turnout to around 60%.
“The heat could have been one reason, but we are happy that people came peacefully and cast their votes. The rush that was expected in the evening didn’t happen,” he said.
According to Professor Sanjay Kumar, the director of Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, elections across the country over the last five years had established a trend of higher voter turn outs and a similar one was expected for the Delhi civic polls.
However, the high-pitch national campaigns undertaken by the BJP, the AAP and the Congress did generate the expected higher turn out.
Election fatigue
“One can argue that there is a certain election fatigue that has set in what with elections in Delhi every year from 2012 to 2015, but I don’t buy that argument or that voter interest is low. There are several factors which could have affected turnout such as heat or the fact that polling began an hour later than usual,” Mr. Kumar said, adding that a higher turnout could have been achieved if elections had been scheduled on a weekday, especially mid-week.
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