Voters and experts feel that holding polling on a weekday will not increase voter turnout.
Electricity supply, state welfare schemes, education and health infrastructure which ranked low on voter’s priority lists during the 2018 state elections, are now an important deciding factors say, voters and experts.
Ankith Gowda, resident of Bangalore and student at St.Josephs College said, “The pre-Covid scenario was completely different, I feel this time people will really vote for these welfare schemes.” He added that after the pandemic high inflation has hit the people hard and their cost of living has gone up, so the Congress offering Rs 2000 to a home maker, will surely see an impact. “When I asked a lady she told me that she will vote for Congress just for the Rs.2000 direct transfer to refill her Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG); also people in towns and villages are favoring Janata Dal’s free English medium education scheme to cut down expenses for their child’s education,” he said.
Similarly, parties also feel that these welfare schemes will have a positive impact on people’s lives and also on their voting choice. “The cost of living has gone up but not income. These schemes are not freebies since we have to compensate. The Rs.2000 direct cash transfer will help women in compensation for cylinder price,” said Anand Prasad, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee.
In 2018 a Lokniti post poll survey conducted after the elections found that only 0.4 percent of people gave importance to state welfare schemes while voting. Also, only 0.4 percent said that electricity supply was an important issue and education facilities like schools, accounted to 1.3 percent.
In similar instances, even religious issues like reservation for the Lingayat community was not ranked high on voter’s priority list. The survey showed that 0.1 percent of people though that Lingayat religion issue was an important factor in their voting choice. ‘Protection of one’s religion’ and cast accounted for only 0 and 0.1 percent respectively. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to scrap the four percent reservation to the Muslims and instead give it to the Lingayats and Vokkalingas as they are a crucial vote bank.
Sumedh, a resident of Bangalore said, “The issue of reservation for the Lingayats will undoubtedly have an impact. I think due to the reservation the Lingayats and Bhramins will support the BJP again.”
The 2018 post poll survey also showed that majority of voters (26.5 percent) said that they decided on which party to vote on the day of the elections while 21.3 percent said they made up their mind a day or two before the elections. But parties, experts and voters say otherwise this year.
“This time majority of people have already decided who to vote. They have had enough of the BJP government’s corruption and are frustrated. People have decided they want a new government and new Chief Minister,” said Prasad.
Dr.Harishikesh M Bevanur, Professor of Political Science, said, “Everyone knows whom to vote for; I do not believe that people make their decision on the day of voting. This may be the case for people who may get influenced by money to vote for a particular party but not the majority.” Similarly, the voters too feel that many may have already made their choice but last minute gimmicks by parties like distributing money may affect the choices of some.
The Election Commission in order to increase voter turnout has now announced the polling date on Wednesday, May 10. The Election Commission said that they decided to schedule the polling day on a weekday and not hold it on a Friday or Monday as many may go on a long weekend. But, Sumedh says this will result in fewer people turning up to vote. “Keeping voting in the middle of a busy weekday is a terrible plan. My wife who is from Bagalkot and works for a corporate company here in Bangalore will of course not travel during the week to vote because it will be tiring for her. If it was on a weekend or Monday it would have benefited everyone.”
Similarly, Rishikesh also said that the polling percentage might be slightly higher but won’t make much of a difference.
