Political outfits — both ruling and opposition — feel the polling percentage will rise by at least 15-20% compared to the 2007 civic polls when the city witnessed 46.05% voter turnout.
Irrespective of the outcome of Team Anna’s agitation against corruption, the growth in civic activism and the increase in number of citizen candidates are likely to result in a rise in voter turnout for the Mumbai civic polls, feel netas and citizens.
Political outfits — both ruling and opposition — feel the polling percentage will rise by at least 15-20% compared to the 2007 civic polls when the city witnessed 46.05% voter turnout.
While Ashish Shelar, BJP group leader in the BMC, feels that citizens’ involvement in civic activities has increased, thanks to Anna Hazare, Congress corporator Sameer Desai is confident that people will turn out in huge numbers to the polling booths this year.
Sharad Kumar, trustee of AGNI, said: “The fact that youth are registering themselves is a positive sign. Earlier, people were not enthused to vote because there was no awareness on how not exercising their franchise could affect them adversely. Now, the scene seems to have changed.”
But, Mayank Gandhi, Mumbai co-ordinator of India Against Corruption, is not confident of a rise in votes polled. But, he added, the organisation will take all efforts to ensure that people head to the polling stations on February 16.
Senior journalist and political observer Abhay Mokashi also believes that growing activism and fielding independent citizens’ candidates need not necessarily reflect into a rise in voting percentage.
“Some forces have given a twist to the issue of corruption and lakhs had turned up to protest at the Gateway of India. But, such awareness doesn’t always convert into voting,” said Mokashi.
“The people who agitated against corruption also advocated boycotting voting, if they found a candidate as illegible. The fickleness in their stance [like opposing Congress in the polls first and changing the guard over the same later] has influenced the opinion of people. So, I don’t see a big change in statistics.”
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