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Coimbatore: Poor voter turnout in the urban local body elections in Coimbatore city despite aggressive campaigning by political parties has puzzled officials as well as politicians.
There are close to eight lakh voters in the city, but only 4.21 lakh cast their votes on Saturday accounting for 53.6%, which was much lesser than the 59% polling in 2011 elections. There was high voter turnout in municipalities and town panchayats, though.
Confusion over polling booths due to ward delimitation carried out after the last civic polls and non-distribution of booth slips were cited as reasons for the low turnout.
Coimbatore South MLA Vanathi Srinivasan was an example of the confusion over booth reassignment. She visited a school at Tatabad where she regularly votes but was told that her name was absent.
Her name was later found to be in CMS School where she visited later and cast the vote. If Vanathi was patient enough to check out where her name was assigned and took pains to go there and vote, many of the public chose not to do so and returned home without voting.
Among the 100 wards in the city, ward no. 45 registered the lowest turnout at 38.46%. Out of total 14,377 voters in the ward, only 5,229 exercised their franchise.
Ward no. 6 recorded the highest turnout with 70.9% of the voters turning out to vote. The highest number of voters in terms of absolute numbers was from ward 81, one of the biggest wards in the city where 16,693 polled. Still, this was only 50.8% of the total voters in the ward as many bunked the polling. The lowest number of voters were from ward 14 which recorded 3,751 voters accounting for 47.2%.
AIADMK men blamed DMK for poor turnout, accusing the ruling party of spreading fear. “There were rowdies deployed by DMK everywhere. Coimbatore people are peace loving and hence chose to stay indoors,” said an AIADMK functionary. DMK countered saying that the misinformation campaign by AIADMK forced many people from not casting votes.
Yet another reason was the closure of many polling booths by 5pm. Voters who had visited the booths after 5pm were turned away. Only after the public staged a protest and political parties too raised their objection, voting was allowed. Election officials said there was a lack of interest among the public to vote too. “This could be because of the extent of irregularities which might have put off urban residents,” said an election officer.
On the other hand, political parties blamed the election commission for not creating enough awareness on the need for 100 % polling like the way they did in assembly polls.
There are close to eight lakh voters in the city, but only 4.21 lakh cast their votes on Saturday accounting for 53.6%, which was much lesser than the 59% polling in 2011 elections. There was high voter turnout in municipalities and town panchayats, though.
Confusion over polling booths due to ward delimitation carried out after the last civic polls and non-distribution of booth slips were cited as reasons for the low turnout.
Coimbatore South MLA Vanathi Srinivasan was an example of the confusion over booth reassignment. She visited a school at Tatabad where she regularly votes but was told that her name was absent.
Her name was later found to be in CMS School where she visited later and cast the vote. If Vanathi was patient enough to check out where her name was assigned and took pains to go there and vote, many of the public chose not to do so and returned home without voting.
Among the 100 wards in the city, ward no. 45 registered the lowest turnout at 38.46%. Out of total 14,377 voters in the ward, only 5,229 exercised their franchise.
Ward no. 6 recorded the highest turnout with 70.9% of the voters turning out to vote. The highest number of voters in terms of absolute numbers was from ward 81, one of the biggest wards in the city where 16,693 polled. Still, this was only 50.8% of the total voters in the ward as many bunked the polling. The lowest number of voters were from ward 14 which recorded 3,751 voters accounting for 47.2%.
AIADMK men blamed DMK for poor turnout, accusing the ruling party of spreading fear. “There were rowdies deployed by DMK everywhere. Coimbatore people are peace loving and hence chose to stay indoors,” said an AIADMK functionary. DMK countered saying that the misinformation campaign by AIADMK forced many people from not casting votes.
Yet another reason was the closure of many polling booths by 5pm. Voters who had visited the booths after 5pm were turned away. Only after the public staged a protest and political parties too raised their objection, voting was allowed. Election officials said there was a lack of interest among the public to vote too. “This could be because of the extent of irregularities which might have put off urban residents,” said an election officer.
On the other hand, political parties blamed the election commission for not creating enough awareness on the need for 100 % polling like the way they did in assembly polls.
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