Campaign to increase voter turnout in Tirupur

From sticker campaigns and distribution of pamphlets, the election department officials in the district have been doing everything to enthuse people to come to polling booths for ensuring 100 per cent voter turnout.

The recent elections held since formation of Tirupur district in 2009 show that polling percentage constantly hovered only around 75 per cent.

Official statistics tells that the cumulative polling percentage in the eight Assembly constituencies that fall in Tirupur revenue district, stood at 74.62 percent in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections.

In the 2011 Assembly elections, the aggregate polling percentage in the said eight constituencies increased to 78.02 per cent but only to fall back to 74.09 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

R. M. Senthil Kumar, a chartered accountant, feels that unless the political culture changes and people develop better faith in the system, mere asking of voters to come to polling stations would not result in high turnout.

M. Sudhakar and K. Vivek, both doing postgraduate studies, sounded sceptical of the results of going to polling stations.

Choice of candidates

“When we did not have good choice of candidates, what is the point in voting for sake of exercising franchise. Successive governments have failed to address the issues of corruption. If at all we are going to the polling stations, we then have to press the “NOTA (none of the above) option,” they said.

Few workers in the knitwear industry expressed their intention to take a much needed break from the work on the polling date. “Even if NOTA gets maximum votes, the election results are not suspended which too makes us think twice before going to polling stations”, said K. Palanivel, an industry worker.