Even as political parties ended campaigning for the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) election on Tuesday; party workers have started making last-ditch attempts to reach out to voters under the garb of giving voters’ slips to them.
Every party has formed crack teams that are armed with a list of 1,000 names (called Hazari Yadi). These teams will visit every household to get feedback on the trends and will give it to the candidates, so that they can concentrate on increasing the voting percentage in areas that need ‘special attention’.
While speaking to DNA, a Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) candidate from Yerawada, said, “This year, the election commission has designated one polling booth per 800 voters. We have designated two workers per polling booth to reach out to the voters and give them voting slips.”
He also said that understanding the trends was important as quite a sizeable amount of money had been distributed in various slums of the area in the last few hours.
The issuance of voters’ slips is of utmost importance from the point of view of both voters and candidates. For voters, it gives the location of his / her polling booth and for the political party it is the last-minute opinion poll.
From the candidate’s point of view, the choice of party workers is of utmost importance, as they serve as links between the party and the voters.
During the Khadakwasla assembly by-poll, disgruntled workers of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) had urged citizens to vote for the BJP- Shiv Sena candidate at the last moment.
Expressing his feeling a day before the elections, a senior Congressman said, “We try our best to reach out to the voters, but we can never be sure of the outcome of elections.”
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