This time also Capital records poor turnout of 40%

CM Naveen Patnaik casting vote

BHUBANESWAR: Despite all attempts to sensitise voters to exercise their franchises in large numbers, the capital city recorded poor turnout of 40 per cent. Even city’s turnout of 48 per cent in 2009 twin elections was quite higher than the turnout of this time.

It was seen that the capital city had witnessed low turnout of less than 50 per cent in the elections to the Urban Local Body (ULB), Assembly and Lok Sabha. Keeping in view, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) had taken up several awareness drives to make the voters aware about their voting rights so that the turnout will increase, but it could not motivate the educated voters of the city to come out of their houses.

Like other elections, the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls experienced a poor show. The BMC had organised awareness drive such as ‘Runs for Democracy’ and also set up 60 model polling stations to attract the voters to the booths, but nothing helped to improve the poor record.

According to sources, some of the voters were not happy with change in polling booths and other problems regarding voters’ list. In Chandrasekharpur in the city, some voters returned from the polling booths without casting their votes due to changes in booths.