GHMC election 2020: Few step out to vote despite high-voltage campaign in Hyderabad, 46.6% turnout recorded

GHMC Election 2020: Despite the high-pitched campaigning for the civic polls, the city of Hyderabad witnessed less than 50 per cent voter turnout in the election to the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC). In the GHMC polls, over 74.44 lakh voters were eligible to exercise their franchise to elect the mayor of the city which witnessed three-way contests among TRS, AIMIM and the BJP. However, only 46.6 per cent voters turned up for polling.

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A total of 34,54,552 people cast their votes — 48.09 per cent of them were men and 45 per cent were women, reported The News Minute. Close to 11 per cent of the votes accounted for those in the others category. The highest voter turnout of 70.39 per cent was recorded in Kanchanbagh followed by Ramchandrapuram (67.71 per cent) and Patancheru (65.77 per cent).

The lowest turnout was recorded in Yousufguda where only 32.99 per cent people turned to vote. Mehdipatnam recorded 34.41 per cent, Vijayanagar Colony 37.90 per cent and Rein Bazar recorded 42.13 per cent polling on Tuesday. This year’s polling percentage is marginally up if compared to 2016 when the turnout was 45.29 per cent. Of 74,24,096 eligible voters, only 33,62,688 had turned up to polling centres to cast their vote. Among the wards with highest voter turnout were Erragadda, Ramchandrapuram and Cherlapally.

This time, the civic polls witnessed quite a charged-up campaigning by TRS, AIMIM and the BJP. The BJP had deployed its top national leaders — party chief Nadda, Yogi Adityanath, Devendra Fadnavis, Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, Tejashwi Surya — for campaigning in Hyderabad. Amit Shah himself visited the city on the last day of campaigning and promised to make the city an IT hub. He also said that the next mayor of the city will be from the BJP.