As usual, Hyderabadis did not turn up for voting for GHMC elections on Tuesday.
The GHMC elections might have caught nation-wide attention with high-voltage campaign by national leaders for the past two weeks, but it failed to bring Hyderabadis to the polling booths to cast their votes.
An abysmally low of less than 40 per cent polling was recorded on Tuesday.
This is worst when compared with 45.25% recorded in 2016 GHMC polls, which itself was low. Almost all the polling booths wore a deserted look since 7 am when the polling to elect corporators for 150 wards in GHMC had commenced until 6 pm when the polling ended. Few videos of election staff in polling booths taking a nap as there were no voters have become viral on social media exposing the pathetic situation.
Shockingly, liquor shops witnessed more rush than polling booths after 6 pm, when they were reopened after a gap of 48 hours due to election code.
The city voters seem to have lived up to the expectations that they ignore voting, irrespective of whatever elections are held.
The track record of city voters prove beyond doubt that they lack interest to cast votes, be it municipal corporation or Assembly or Lok Sabha polls.
As per the data available with the Election Commission, during 2016 GHMC polls, overall poll percentage was 45.29. Of the total 74,24,096 electors then, only 33,62,688 cast their vote. Similarly, a poor percentage of polling was recorded in the 2014 general elections as well as assembly elections held in 2018.
In general elections to Lok Sabha and assembly elections held in 2014, the voting percentage was about 53 percent in Hyderabad.
In the 2018 Assembly polls, this dropped to 50.86 percent in Hyderabad. In Lok Sabha elections held in April 2019, Hyderabad constituency recorded a mere 44.75 per cent while it was 46.26 per cent in Secunderabad. The overall turnout in Hyderabad district comprising these two constituencies was 45.51 per cent.
Hyderabadis are not just making a mockery of democracy by ignoring to vote, they are even wasting a huge amount of public money being spent by the government for conducting elections.
The Telangana State Election Commission along with GHMC has allocated Rs 60,000 per polling station for GHMC polls this time, which includes expenses related to travel and dearness allowance for officials, food, barricading, wheelchairs, ramps, erection of flexies and hoardings for guiding voters to polling booths, apart from costs related to providing face masks, hand gloves and sanitisers to polling personnel because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
A total 74,67,256 voters are eligible to vote in the 2020 civic body elections at It has set up 9,101 polling stations spread over 2,927 locations besides 36,404 polling personnel to enable 74.67 lakh voters in GHMC limits to cast their vote without any trouble.
Rs. 54.6 crore was spent on the polling day and another Rs. 13.65 crore will be spent on counting of votes on December 4. Overall, the expenditure will be more than Rs. 100 crore, which includes raising awareness programmes and educating voters to cast their votes all of which has now gone down the drain.