Against Lok Sabha polls, voter turnout rose by 4% in Maharashtra Assembly polls

MUMBAI: The final voter turn out figures, released by the Election Commission on Thursday, revealed that 51% of the electorate had turned out to exercise their franchise in Mumbai on Wednesday. This was better than the 45% turnout in the 2009 assembly polls, but poorer than the 53% turnout in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. The provisional numbers, released on Wednesday, had put the city turnout at 55%. All the same, this was the first time since 1995 that Mumbai crossed the 50% mark in assembly polls.

Unlike Mumbai, there was not a sizeable difference between the provisional and corrected Maharashtra voting percentages. While the provisional state tally was 65%, the final figure was 64%, still higher than both the 2009 assembly poll turnout and the 2014 LS turnout.

Although most Mumbai constituencies improved on the voting percentages of 2009 assembly polls, three constituencies bucked the trend. In Magathane, against 54.1% in 2009, the turnout stood at 52.7% on Wednesday.The other two segments that witnessed a drop were: Vikhroli (51.6% in 2014 and 52.4% in 2009) and Mankhurd-Shivaji Nagar (41.3% in 2014 and 42.2% in 2009). Many of these areas, political observers said, have a strong presence of lowerand lower-middleclass population.

In another three assembly segments, the voting percentage remained roughly the same: Goregaon (48.5% in 2014 and 48% in 2009), Anushakti Nagar (46.7% in 2014 and 46.1% in 2009), and Chembur (49.7% in 2014 and 49% in 2009).

Speaking on the difference between Mumbai's voting percentage and the state average, experts working with the Election Commission explained that nearly 14% of the total voters form the city's shifting population. "These voters do not have photos on their identity cards. They are unable to get themselves on the electoral lists because they keep moving to different places within or outside the city. The commission recently reached out to such people through letters, but only over 4,000 people re-registered," an expert pointed out.