Chennai disappoints on election day with 50% polling

About 72 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s 5.82 crore voters cast their votes in the elections to the 15th Legislative Assembly on Monday.

Though the final numbers will come out only on Tuesday, the percentage turnout belied expectations of a higher turnout based on projections earlier in the day when in two-three hours of start of voting, the numbers rose to about 20 per cent and by mid-day to about 40 per cent.

According to the Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni, the highest turnout was in Pennagaram which reported about 85 per cent polling, while in Chennai it was just about 50 per cent.

The media blitz by official agencies and celebrity exhortation to the public to vote on elections has had little effect on the Chennaiite who appears to have been relatively blasé about voting.

The day started out warm and humid as is usual for the Chennai summer, but by about 10 am the weather cooled down and took the voters by surprise with light rains in several locations. But it lasted for just a few minutes. Voters, however, continued to pour into the polling booths with long queues in a number of localities. Rains were much heavier in the southern parts of Tamil Nadu.

Polling was held for 232 of the 234 constituencies in Tamil Nadu with elections put off in two districts – Aravakurichi and Thanjavur. Nearly one lakh electronic voting machines were deployed in 66,000 polling stations.

It was a multi-cornered battle between the ruling AIADMK; the DMK-Congress combine; DMDK-PWF-TMC alliance, which promoted itself as a third front; the PMK and the BJP. But the elections are mostly seen as the usual AIADMK-DMK contest.

With a holiday being declared for the elections, traffic was sparse in the first half of the day on Chennai’s streets as offices, banks and business establishments remained closed. However, with the weather cooling down following the light rains earlier in the day, residents used the opportunity to hit the picnic spots.

The Secretariat, the government headquarters, wore a deserted look except for the offices of the Election Department, which was abuzz with activity – the Electoral Officer kept giving regular updates on the polling, which was mostly peaceful except for some stray incidents.

A control room was in operation with monitors bringing live feed of the polling booths. District Revenue Officers monitored the live screens.

A call centre with over 50 staff, which has been working for the last couple of months, handled over 7,000 calls per shift, clarifying peoples doubts about election issues and registering complaints.

A significant portion of the complaints were about calls demanding action against one political party or the other, distributing cash for votes at various locations. “Typically, we would receive a call stating that there is a power cut in a locality. This would then be followed with calls that people have started distributing cash under the cover of darkness,” a staff said.

The call centre would then alert the police teams in the area and the utility staff to ensure power is restored. In the run up to the elections, allegations of political parties paying cash for votes have figured prominently, a trend seen in recent years.

For the young voters, the multi-front election battle made a choice difficult.

Twenty-year-old Kasi Muthu working in a juice shop had his eyes on a new party, but once the campaign started and promise of freebies flowed, he changed his mind.

A 22-year-old IT employee, Siva Narayan, had decided to opt for NOTA – none of the above. “But the State needs a change. So I kept that in mind when voting,” he said.

Madhi S, a second-year Chemistry major “voted for a party which had more women-centric schemes.”

“I’m not very keen on leading parties coming to power. So I went with my father’s choice,” said Pavithra V, a second-year engineering student.

(With inputs from Swathi Moorthy)

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