Rs 13.5 crore spent to prod Delhiites to vote, but turnout fails to impress

NEW DELHI: The election office of Delhi has spent more than Rs 13.5 crore in the past few months to encourage voters to come out in large numbers but the result is “disappointing”.
A major chunk of this money, Rs 11 crore, was spent in just about 40 days between April 1 and May 11, while the rest was spent in the last fiscal, a senior officer in the Delhi election office said. Delhi recorded 60.38% voter turnout, about 5 percentage points lower than 65.09% in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Chief electoral officer of Delhi Ranbir Singh agrees that the voter turnout was “disappointing” this year. “We had invested a lot of time, money and energy on Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) activities in the run-up to the elections this year but it did not translate into votes,” Singh had told TOI on Sunday, the day of the polling.
“The last election (2014 Lok Sabha polls) was held in April when the weather was more comfortable. Unlike this year, it was not the peak summer and vacations had not started. Also, as it was a weekend, some people might have even gone out of town,” he added.
The money, said an official, was spent on print advertising (in English, Hindi and language newspapers), outdoor publicity — hoardings, banners and pamphlets, jingles on radio channels and advertising in metro trains as well as DTC and cluster buses.
The election office had also hired Broadcast Engineering Consultants India Limited (BECIL), a public sector undertaking, which aggressively promoted the Delhi chief electoral officer’s (CEO) official Facebook page and Twitter handle, sharing details of the awareness programmes being conducted across the city.
The CEO office also got voter awareness messages printed on water and electricity bills, which go to almost each and every household in the capital. Radio jingles were played on seven FM channels several times a day.
The returning officers of the seven parliamentary constituencies also organised special events, including qawali evening by Nizami brothers, a musical night by popular singer Mohit Chauhan, dance performances, bike rallies, heritage walks in the Walled City of Chandni Chowk, distribution of saplings, human chain and marathon, street plays and events in malls and residential areas, a senior official said.
International cricketer Rishabh Pant and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Manika Batra were also roped in as star icons to motivate people especially the youth.
While 60.38% cast their votes this year for seven parliamentary seats in Delhi, in absolute numbers, out of 14,317,453 (1.43 crore) registered voters, 86,43,715 (86.43 lakh) exercised their franchise. Of the 669 third gender voters, only 178 came out to vote.