Since 2000, the country has witnessed 107 Assembly elections and three Lok Sabha polls (2004, 2009, and 2014) where EVMs were used to cast and record votes in all the constituencies and at all the poll booths.
The first phase of civic body elections in the state which includes five municipal corporations on Wednesday – recorded low voting percentages. On the other hand, the voter turnout was significantly higher in the 224 Nagar Panchayats (municipal boards) and Nagar Palika (town areas) where ballot papers were used.
This voting pattern has prompted political parties, besides the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, to ask: did the allegations of electronic voting machines being rigged during Assembly elections in February-March result in voter apathy in the municipal corporation areas that used the machines for the civic polls?
The allegations of EVM tampering by Opposition parties had cast a shadow on the BJP’s landslide win in the Assembly polls. In this backdrop, the civic elections are widely seen as an acid test of the BJP’s popularity, with the belief that the charges will lose their sting if the party performs well in areas where ballot papers are used.
Of the five municipal corporations, Gorakhpur had the lowest voter turnout at 35.6% followed by Agra with 40.2%, Kanpur with 44.2%, Meerut with 47.8% and Ayodhya-Faizabad recording 49.9%.
In contrast, the voting percentage in 198 out of the 224 urban local bodies ranged between 60% and 82%. Twenty-two civic bodies saw a turnout between 50% and 60% while the remaining four recorded a turnout of 45% to 50%.
Elections to the remaining 11 municipal corporations and 412 Nagar panchayats and Nagar Palika are scheduled for November 26 and November 29. Votes will be counted on 1st December. Electronic voting machines will be used only for the municipal corporations.
Though it is difficult to measure the exact reason for the low turnout in the municipal corporation election, political parties fear this may have been caused by doubts among the electorate of whether their votes will actually go to the candidates they voted for.
“Allegations of tampering of EVMs during Assembly elections have badly affected the enthusiasm of ordinary voters,” said Sunita Verma, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s mayoral candidate in Meerut. “Many people have started believing that it does not matter whether they cast their votes or not because their choice will not have any bearing on the final result.”
The Congress candidate for the mayor’s post in Ayodhya-Faizabad, Shailendra Mani Pande, agreed. “We tried to convince voters that they must go out to vote, but there is a feeling among large sections that their vote, even if they don’t want, will ultimately increase the tally of the BJP,” he said. “This worry seems to have stopped many voters who didn’t want to vote for the BJP.”
BJP says rivals invalidating EVMs
However, the BJP’s mayoral candidate in Gorakhpur, Sitaram Jaiswal, dismissed these fears and said the low turnout in his constituency had more to do with a faulty voters’ list than with people’s perception of electronic voting machines.
The BJP had won 10 of the 12 mayoral posts up for the contest in 2012 but managed to bag only 42 posts of municipal board chairperson and 36 Nagar panchayat seats.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday advocated the Uttar Pradesh Election Commission to use ballot papers in the ongoing municipal body elections in the state instead of Electronic Voting Machines.
“The Election Commission needs to restore people’s faith and drop EVMs in the next two phases of voting in the state,” AAP said in a letter to the poll panel, a day after voters at a polling booth in Meerut protested after one of them discovered that an EVM was recording votes only for the Bharatiya Janata Party even when a button for another party was being pressed.
“There is one common thread everywhere when it comes to complaints against the malfunctioning of the machines…the vote always goes to the ‘lotus,’” AAP leader Atishi Marlena said. “We demand from the Election Commission, and not the state bodies, a comprehensive probe into the matter, which is being treated like an isolated incident.”
AAP claimed that 77 incidents of malfunctioning voting machines had been registered with the Election Commission during the first phase of voting in the Utter Pradesh municipal elections on Wednesday.