Poor turnout in Mumbai civic polls

As expected, Mumbai’s disinterested voters failed to turn up to vote on Thursday, with the metropolis recording a little over 30 per cent turnout of its 10 million-plus voters for elections to the Bombay Municipal Corporation. The overall turnout of voters for elections to 10 civic bodies in Maharashtra was slightly better at nearly 40 per cent. But except for stray cases of violence in Pune, Nashik and some other cities, the elections to local urban bodies were largely peaceful. In Mumbai alone, over 25,000 policemen and other security personnel had been deployed to prevent clashes. The state government had declared a holiday on Thursday in the 10 cities that went to the polls — Mumbai, Thane, Ulhasnagar, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Solapur, Nashik, Akola, Amravati and Nagpur. But the turnout in Mumbai in the morning hours was extremely poor, and many polling booths were empty. The turnout at polling booths in affluent areas was shockingly low, though booths in slum pockets and poorer localities registered a good turnout. Politicians including sitting Congress MPs Milind Deora and Priya Dutt and a few Bollywood celebrities and industrialists expressed shock at the low turnout. “It is sad that a lot of people have not come out to vote,” said Dutt. “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain. They are not contributing to society. You are getting what you deserve and you are harming society and the country.” A total of more than 20 million voters in these 10 cities were entitled to exercise their franchise. The 10 municipal corporations have a total of 1,244 seats (including 227 in Mumbai) and 9,534 candidates (including 2,232 in Mumbai) were in the fray. In Mumbai, there were more than 8,300 voting centres spread across the metropolis. Some of the voters were disappointed on turning up at the polling booths as their names were missing. Prominent among them was Gulzar, the renowned Bollywood lyricist, whose name was missing from a Bandra ward. In Saki Naka near Andheri, a 55-year-old voter suffered a heart attack and died after casting his vote. During the 2007 civic elections — which returned the Shiv Sena-BJP combine to power — Mumbai had recorded 46 per cent voting. And even in the 2009 general and state assembly elections, less than 50 per cent of the electorate had turned up to vote. But Thursday’s poor turnout of just over 30 per cent was the lowest in recent history.