The country's election watchdog has expressed its disappointment over voter apathy in metropolitan cities, including the National Capital region (NCR) cities, noting it as a pointer to the rigid levels of apathy in India's high-tech city in the first two phases of Lok Sabha polls.
With the dismal poll average, the Election Commission has doubled up its voter participation interventions to overcome the `small drop' in turnout in the first two phases. Besides an exclusive action plan taken up by it, the Commission hopes that urban centres going to polls in next phases turn the tide.
The poll body has roped celebrity endorsements featuring national icon Sachin Tendulkar, Rajkummar Rao, as well as actors Ayushmann Khurrana and Vijay Varma, alongside non-celebrity TVCs to promote voter's awareness.
Additionally, short films and videos are being produced by DD for social media and its channels. Radio jingle, Vox pop programmes, RJ Mention, celebrity interviews, influencer engagement, and social media messaging are being done on various radio station platforms. Food delivery platforms such as Zomato and Swiggy have also partnered with EC for disseminating voter awareness messages in their unique style.
In collaboration with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the poll body has launched voter awareness messages and songs which are being played at different stadiums during IPL 2024 to encourage people to cast their vote.
The commission's social media cell has started a social media campaign "I am Election Ambassador". In another initiative, a voting day alert was sent to all Facebook users pan India to inform and inform the voters about the general elections and also to nudge them to participate in the festival of democracy.
Vast network of post offices and banking institutions was also utilised by the poll body to reach out to a wide and diverse audience across the length and breadth of the country.
The Department of Post has over 1.6 lakhs post offices and 1,000 ATMs and 1,000 digital screens while there are over 1.63 lakh bank branches and 2.2 lakh ATMs across public and private sector banking institutions.
Following the dip in turnout in phase 1, the commission had directed State Chief Electoral Officers of Maharashtra, Bihar, UP and Rajasthan and Karnataka to come up with an additional set of plans to enhance voter turnout.
The commission also held one to one interaction with DEOs of low turnout districts (based on 2019 figures) in phases 3 and 4 to identify ways for enhancing turnout. The turnout so far has been 66.14 per cent in phase 1 and 66.71 per cent in phase 2, which, seen against electoral participation history in India is among the best but somewhat lags the high benchmarks of 2019.
The commission further informed that in collaboration with the Ministry of Railways, the Parliamentary Elections campaign logo "Chunav ka Parv, Desh Ka Garv" has been integrated with IRCTC portal and tickets, SVEEP creatives are being displayed at railway stations and railway station announcements are including voter awareness messages.
Clarifying the delay in announcement of official voter turnout data after the completion of two phases, the poll body said as per statutory requirements, voter turnout is to be recorded at every polling station in absolute numbers in Form 17C. As a strong measure of transparency, the copies of Form 17C, duly signed by the Presiding Officer and all present polling agents, are shared with all present polling agents. Thus, leave alone Constituency, even booth wise data of actual number of votes polled is available with the candidates, which is a statutory requirement.
