Wary of the “urban apathy” that impacted the overall voter turnouts, be it in Shimla when Himachal Pradesh voted on November 12 or in Surat in the first phase of polling on December 1, the Election Commission (EC) on Saturday went public urging the voters of Gujarat to come out in large numbers during the second phase of polling for 93 seats on December 5, high-voltage campaigning for which ended on Saturday. As many as 833 candidates are in the fray across 93 constituencies for the December 5 polls. Votes will be counted on December 8. Prominent candidates in the second phase of the triangular contest involving the BJP, Congress and the AAP include Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel from Ghatlodia, Patidar leader Hardik Patel from Viramgam and OBC leader Alpesh Thakor from Gandhinagar South. Both Hardik and Thakor are contesting on BJP ticket.
The first phase of voting was held for 89 seats in Saurashtra, Kutch and south Gujarat on December 1.
“Urban apathy continues unabated from Shimla to Surat. ECI appeals to voters of Gujarat to come out in large numbers during second phase to compensate for low voting in 1st phase,” the ECI spokesperson tweeted.
In Gujarat, voter turnout in Surat, Rajkot and Jamnagar was lower than the overall 63.3 per cent in the first phase of Gujarat assembly elections, the poll panel said. The voting percentage in the first phase of election in Gujarat in 2017 was 66.79 per cent.
The urban assembly seat of Shimla in Himachal Pradesh recorded the lowest turnout in the state at 62.53 per cent, 13 percentage points less than the state average of 75.6 per cent. Though overall the voting percentage increased marginally in Himachal Pradesh in 2022 compared to 2017 (74.17 percent), too many voters shied away from polling stations in urban centres in the State.
The Election Commission said the voting percentage increased in many constituencies in Gujarat in the first-phase polling but the overall turnout was diminished by the urban apathy to voting in key districts such as Surat, Rajkot and Jamnagar.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar appealed to the voters of Gujarat to come out in large numbers during the second-phase polling on December 5 to make up for the low voting in the first phase. The possibility of surpassing the 2017 voting percentage now depends on their increased participation, he said, according to the Election Commission.
There was a visible difference in the turnouts between rural and urban constituencies. The difference is as wide as 34.85 percentage points between the rural constituency of Dediapada in Narmada district (82.71 per cent) and the urban seat of Gandhidham (47.86 pc), a sharp decline of 6.34 percentage points from the 2017 turnout. The latest turnout was a new low, the EC said.
The second lowest voting was in the Karanj constituency of Surat, which was also 5.37 percentage points lower than its own low of 55.91 per cent in 2017.
"Had the voting percentage in these assembly constituencies been even equal to the level of their own voting percentage in 2017 election, the state average would have been more than 65 per cent," the EC underlined in a statement.
"Within many districts, rural constituencies have voted much more than the urban constituencies. For example, in Rajkot, there is a decline (in turnout) in all the urban assembly constituencies," it said.