Election Commission Launches Initiatives to Boost Voter Participation in Low-Turnout Areas

The Election Commission of India (EC) met with district election officials and municipal commissioners in seats with historically low voter participation on Friday in New Delhi.

They were instructed to launch programs and activities by the poll panel in an effort to boost attendance. This is one of the EC's many initiatives in this area.

"In the 2019 General Elections, voter turnout in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, the NCT of Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, J&K, and Jharkhand was lower than the national average of 67.40%," the Election Commission (EC) said in a statement.

The EC has attempted a number of measures in the past, including as working with employers to raise voter awareness at work, allowing elderly people to vote at home, and setting up additional polling sites in apartment buildings. They even suggested that voting be done remotely. Because they feared that employers would have disproportionate influence over polls, trade unions rejected working with them. Opposition parties were also skeptical about remote voting because they believed there would be no checks on their financial and physical might.

The European Commission's Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) initiative now concentrates on certain polling places with low voter turnout. However, after last year's ethno-religious rioting in Manipur, the EC chose not to establish voting places for the voters who were forced to flee the state.

On Friday, the European Commission (EC) put forth a number of suggestions, such as using election-themed public transportation and sanitation vehicles; including voter awareness messages in utility bills; working with resident welfare associations; holding informational sessions in well-known public areas like parks, markets, and malls; organizing marathons, walkathons, and cyclothons; and using hoardings, digital spaces, kiosks, and common service centers to distribute voter education materials.

Despite a consistent rise in voter participation from 45.7% in 1951 to 67.4% in 2019, around 29.7 crore electors did not cast a ballot in the previous year.