Residents Welfare Associations seek apartment-wise voters list to monitor if residents have cast their vote.
Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and citizens-led forums have come together in Bengaluru to set targets to increase voter turnout in the city as well as raise awareness for the election process.
Citizens Empowered is a collective of individuals who have come up with the target of “Mission 100 percent voter turnout in Vidhan Sabha elections”. The collective is made up of citizens, members of resident welfare associations as well as NGOs members. Poornima Shetty, a member of Citizens Empowered and the President of Rustam Bagh Association for Welfare, said that they started a similar campaign during the 2018 state legislative assembly elections.
“Back then it was limited to my area and was called 100 percent voting in Rustam Bagh. We split our locality into eight zones and went door-to-door campaigning to ensure everyone voted. We were successful in increasing voter registrations in our area and were the only booth to get 99 new voters registered,” she said.
From roughly 400 voters in previous elections, after their campaign the number of votes cast in their booth went up to 1200. Due to the campaign’s success, they decided to scale it to encompass the whole city now.
Similarly B-Pac, a non-profit organisation has started its campaign to achieve more than 75 percent voter turnout in Bengaluru. Their set of targets also includes having more than 68.4 lakh voters to turn up and vote. They have also started a ‘know your constituency’ social media campaign with details of the number of wards, polling stations and voters in a constituency as well as the current and previous Members of Legislative Assembly (MLAs) and voter turnout for the 2018 elections. One of the main reasons why they started this campaign was due to “urban voter apathy”.
Bengaluru has always registered fewer votes than other districts in Karnataka. In 2018 Bangalore Urban had a voter turnout of 57 percent, which was less than that of the 2013 assembly elections where it registered 62.03 percent, according to data from B-Pac. Similarly, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) North, South, Central and Bangalore Urban were the districts with the lowest voter turnout in the previously held assembly elections in 2013 and 2018. Further, data from B-Pac shows that from 2013 to 2018, “Bengaluru saw a decline in polling percentage across all four voting zones from 54.04 percent in 2013 to 51.98 percent in 2018.”
Many Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs) have also taken up the initiative of increasing voter turnout in their localities and apartment buildings. Prakash DR, President of the RWA in Hermit Colony in Bengaluru said that they had conducted a voter registration camp in their area and nearly 200 people registered to vote for the first time. Many also corrected issues like change of address, and correction of any other mistakes.
Similarly, Sathish Mallya, Joint Secretary, Bengaluru Apartment Federation said that they too have started voter registration drives in apartments. They have also held town hall meetings with residents and representatives from political parties on addressing civic issues. “There has been a four times increase in voter registration after the campaign in our apartment. From 100 registered voters, it has now come up to 400 in an apartment,” he said. He also said that they have sought for an apartment-wise list of voters from the BBMP to monitor how many have voted on Election Day.
Mahesh Pandya, political analyst, said that such campaigns will definitely help but the voter percentage may increase only by one or two percent; not more than that. He also added that having an apartment wise voters list will be helpful in monitoring if people have cast their votes.
