Polling percentage in the Assembly elections increased by 2.52 per cent. This suggests that the efforts made by the Election Commission of India failed to bear fruits. Besides, the political parties are contemplating this in their favour.
CEO of Madhya Pradesh Jaideep Govind feels that polling by over 72% is an encouraging figure, but it would have been better if polling could have reached around 80%, as expected.
The increase in polling percentage from 2003 Assembly elections to 2008 was recorded at 2.5 per cent, while a similar increase was witnessed in 2013.
This time, the Election Commission had come out with unique ways to increase the voting percentage. It had installed an exhibition and eye-catching advertisements, both in electronic and print media. Bollywood actor Rajeev Verma and bhajan singer Prahlad Tipania were especially hired for the cause.
The panel had spent around `25 lakh in all the 51 districts for voters’ awareness programme. Besides, voluntary organisations had also joined hands with the ECI. Similarly, the political parties also made efforts in bringing out the voters on the polling day. They had published advertisements in newspapers on the same day and through electronic media, they had appealed to the voters for using their franchise.
Official sources said the EC had set a target of 80 per cent polling in Madhya Pradesh and for the purpose, special campaigns were launched around one year back. The Commission did succeed in attracting 1.20 crore more voters, but failed in touching its desired target.
However, the increase in vote percentage is being considered as remarkable. The Commission is patting its back for the reason, but on the contrary, the political parties are busy in calculating as where the increased votes were cast. The ruling BJP believes that the reason behind this increase was that the people came out in large number to make Shivraj Singh Chouhan CM for third term.