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    Lok Sabha Polls 2014: Mixed voter turnout in Bangalore's multi-cornered fight

    Synopsis

    The endeavour of prominent Bangaloreans yields mixed results – turnouts in the IT capital were lower than in rest of K'taka but higher than 5 years ago.

    ET Bureau
    By KR Balasubramanyam

    Sindhu S, a 33-year-old Gurgaon-based management graduate, was eagerly waiting for April 17, the day Bangalore went to polls. A day earlier, she took a flight to Bangalore and landed at her parents’ home unannounced. On the rolls in Bangalore, she was excited about the thought of voting for the first time in her life. “I enrolled as a voter six months ago, and got my voter’s ID. I see this election as the most eventful one, and wanted to exercise my right.” She missed out on voting in the past as she lived in the US. Her husband, Atul Rajbhushan, 40, public affairs and communications manager with Coca-Cola India, too flew down to Bangalore to vote.

    “I voted first in 1991 elections when I turned 18, and have not missed even a single election,” Rajbhushan says. He moved to Delhi six years ago, yet has remained a voter in Bangalore, and makes it a point to take part in polls, big or small. “After I moved to Delhi six years ago, this is the fourth time I am coming down to take part in elections,” he says.

    The elections in India’s IT capital were easily the most colourful in recent times. Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani made a big difference to the poll dynamics with his presence as Congress candidate in Bangalore South, taking on the five-term MP, BJP’s Ananth Kumar. The Aam Admi Party (AAP), too, successfully managed to create its own buzz, and fielded Nilekani’s former Infosys colleague, V Balakrishnan.

    A New High

    Bangalore’s energy levels witnessed a new high this time. There were several first-time voters like Sindhu — many in their teens — who left no stone unturned to be at the right place at the right time. When Naman Pugalia, a 26-year-old former Google Inc employee, moved from Delhi to Bangalore in September, the first thing he did was to register with the election authorities and ensure his name figured on the electoral rolls. “There is this rule that you have to be a resident of a place for at least six months to be an eligible voter,” says Pugalia, who followed Nilekani like a shadow overseeing his campaign activities.

    A first-time voter himself, he was among the first few to cast his vote in Bangalore South as soon as the polling started on Thursday. There were other interesting experiences, too — like the one 32-year-old Saranya Ardhanari, an employee with pharma multinational Novo Nordisk, had on the day of polling. After fulfilling all formalities with election authorities for enrolment for herself and her parents, she was shocked not to find any of their names on the Election Commission website. But she decided to walk the extra mile.

    On D-day, she optimistically visited the polling booth near her house in Bangalore Central constituency, and was pleasantly shocked to find all their names on the revised electoral roll. She immediately alerted her parents, too. “I would not have compromised. I strongly feel one should not give up on one’s democratic right,” she says.

    These are some of the inspiring tales of how several Bangaloreans persisted with odds, and received the world’s biggest democratic ritual with due respect, care and seriousness. Many prominent citizens thought the city with about 13 lakh techies put up a stellar show by turning up in large numbers at polling stations. At 56%, however, the city’s average turnout was way below that of entire Karnataka, which scored an impressive 67.3%.

     
    Weekend Steals the Show

    Bangalore South and Central, the two Lok Sabha seats that hogged the headlines due to the presence of Nilekani and Balakrishnan, recorded the lowest turnouts in Karnataka with both clocking 55.7% turnouts.

    “There was so much energy and interest among people. I am surprised the turnout is low,” says a disappointed Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman and managing director at Biocon, and president of Bangalore Political Action Committee or B-PAC, the young non-profit working in the area of increasing political awareness among Bangaloreans, and to bring about accountability among the elected representatives. Shaw wrote personal mails to some 4,000 of her Bangalore-based employees, requesting them to vote before they went on a vacation. The polling day was followed by the Good Friday holiday, and the long weekend is one explanation for the relatively low turnout.

    Ardhanari, however, provides her own insight to explain the indifference of many Bangaloreans. “In Bangalore, we don’t seem to care about voting because we get all the basic facilities like power, water and roads without much struggle. In rural areas, voters are more concerned and particular about the kind of leaders they want because they are denied most of the facilities that we get in cities,” she says.

    But, then, there is also a brighter side. The IT capital’s poll figures have jumped some 10% from the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. “I was upset at the initial trends in Bangalore, but am relieved because the final percentage is far better than the previous elections,” says S Suresh Kumar, a four-term BJP MLA from Bangalore. Nilekani adds: “In Bangalore, you also have a lot of floating voters. If you leave out all that, the turnout I think is still very good.”

    In the past one year, hundred thousands of new voters have joined the list — many of them after going through the rigmarole of enrolment that involved a couple of visits to the municipal office. As a result, the elector to population ratio — the number of voters to population — has gone up in Bangalore. In each of the three Lok Sabha constituencies in the IT capital, this ratio is now 72%, which Karnataka chief electoral officer Anil Kumar Jha describes as very encouraging. “Last year it was around 65%; this is a big improvement,” Jha says.

    The AAP Factor

    A lot of this is due to the proactive work done by several NGOs since last year’s assembly elections in getting non-voters onto the list, and due to the work done by outfits like Friends of AAP, Together With Nandan, NaMo Brigade and the like. As a result, between January and April, the number of voters in Bangalore constituencies shot up by almost 6 lakh, from 79.35 lakh to 85.19 lakh. At 23.9 lakh, Bangalore North has the largest number of voters.

    Last year, Shaw’s B-PAC began an enrolment drive to increase the number of voters ahead of the May assembly elections. “Six lakh new voters were enrolled last year. This reflected in a higher voter turnout in Bangalore from 45% in 2008 assembly elections to 57%,” says TV Mohandas Pai, chairman, Manipal Global Education Services, and vice-president at B-PAC. “The quality of electoral rolls in Bangalore has improved but not to such an extent that it gives us full confidence. Bangalore has possibly the lowest quality of technology used for electoral rolls. There are too many problems,” he says.

    One of the highlights of the 2014 polls in Bangalore was the large number of working professionals — mostly from the new economy sectors — working for political parties or candidates, either taking time off from work, or a sabbatical, or quitting their jobs altogether. This was a new trend sparked largely by the emergence of AAP. Take the case of 37-year-old Anand Janakiraman. An employee with Strand Lifesciences in Bangalore, he has taken a year-long sabbatical to work on the campaign of Nina Nayak, the AAP candidate for Bangalore South, and Nilekani’s rival. He supervised Nayak’s campaign activities. “I joined the movement inspired by Arvind Kejriwal’s ideas. All of us are volunteers here. No one gets any remuneration.”

     
    Bellary: Low Money Flow, High Voter Turnout

    A not so apocryphal story on election day in Bellary goes this way: a woman was heard saying in what was once the capital of the iron ore mafia in Karnataka that she got a mere Rs 100 to cast her vote in favour of a particular political party ahead of the polls. A Bellary election official overheard her and smiled — he felt a sense of accomplishment for actually bringing down the incentive from Rs 1,000 or Rs 500 earlier to Rs 100 now.

    One big reason for this was the utmost vigilance of the election authorities to check the money flow. They seized about Rs 11 crore during this election season. “We not only identified the source points, and plugged them, we also stepped up our surveillance at possible distribution points,” says Aditya Amlan Biswas, returning officer and district magistrate of Bellary. “With each seizure, we are also educated about the methodology and modus operandi. This will help us clean up the system.”

    Says AAP candidate Shivakumar Malagi: “The mining lords-turned-politicians have polluted voters in the district so much in the past 10 years that many people offered to vote for me only if I gave them something — even if it is as low as Rs 20.” According to him, most people are addicted to inducements. “They need something in return even if it is some puffed rice. I think things will improve if another two elections are held as tightly as this one,” he says.

    The district, bordering Andhra Pradesh, has rich iron ore reserves. But their over-exploitation in recent years through illegal mining and exports not only made the district infamous, but has also landed several people — including former BJP minister G Janardhana Reddy, and three sitting MLAs — in jail. The declining influence of the Reddys has had a sobering effect on the polls. In the 2008 assembly elections, and 2009 general elections, the district witnessed a lot of disturbances. In 2008, workers of a political party even burnt down the vehicle of a candidate. In the following year too, police booked many for violence.

    On April 17, when the Lok Sabha seat with about 16 lakh voters went to the polls, it was not only peaceful and incident-free, the turnout too hit record levels — at 70.3%, Bellary came fifth in Karnataka. “There has been a 9% jump compared with last general elections, and this is very good. Even in urban areas, we had good average voting of 60%-plus,” says Biswas. Analysts say Bellary recorded low voter turnouts in the past in spite of candidates spending humongous amounts of money, but this time the turnout is high despite a lower money flow. That is a sign of hope for the district.


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