Chief Electoral Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Tuesday blamed "urban apathy" for the lack of enthusiasm among voters that leads to low turnout during elections; the CEC said the commission has deliberately scheduled the polling days in Maharashtra and Jharkhand on mid-week so that more people can vote.
Flagging the issue of low voting percentage in urban centres including those like Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra, the Chief Electoral Commissioner said the issue of Urban and Youth Apathy is a major concern for the Commission and it is taking a number of steps to increase voter awareness.
Kumar said the commission has observed that urban voters tend to combine weekends with the polling day holiday for getaways, etc., and skip polling. Hence, the EC has scheduled the voting for mid-week so that more people can vote.
Kumar appealed to voters in urban areas to participate in elections and said polling days in Maharashtra and Jharkhand have been kept mid-week so that the issue of urban apathy can be handled.
"We are really 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," he said.
Look at Gurgaon, look at Faridabad, recently, last election Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad, Bengaluru South, Gandhinagar, Colaba, Pune, Thane... all are much below state averages of each state," he said.
"We will be conducting a special meeting of the municipal commissioners in a week's time to appeal again," he said.
In Maharashtra, turnouts in 62 of 64 urban assembly constituencies were less than the state average in 2019, as was the case in Lok Sabha elections, he said, adding "We will have a special drive for urban areas".
He said in the recent Haryana election, there were booths in the "poshest" areas where voting was less than 20 per cent.
"We will do a lot of work on this," he added.
It is important to note that the trends of urban apathy were also witnessed during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Colaba in south Mumbai (40%), Pune Cantonment (43 %), Mumbadevi and Kurla in Mumbai (44%) and Kalyan near Mumbai (41%) were the areas which recorded among the lowest voter turnout in the Lok Sabha polls this year.
Notably, after the Lok Sabha polls, the political parties demanded that polling should be held in the middle of a week so that people do not club polling days with the weekend and treat it as an extended holiday.
