Study to improve voters' turnout in civic polls

PUNE: People not coming out to vote on polling day for zilla parishad, municipal councils and municipal corporations has become a worry for the state election commission.

The commission has turned to Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE), Pune, to conduct a study and suggest measures to improve the turnout.

Data of all the polls in the panchayat samitis, zilla parishads, councils and corporations between 1993 and 2013 have been given to the GIPE team.

The data analysis will provide crucial insights into the trends of different local body elections so that strategies can be designed for the forthcoming elections to get people to cast their votes.

A team comprising GIPE director Rajas Parchure, Dnyandev Talule and Manasi Phadke will conduct the study. The reports and its findings will be submitted to the state election commission next week.

"The commission is concerned about declining voters' turnout on polling days. It wants to formulate a strategy to increase the voters' turnout in rural and urban areas of the state. The commission is keen on finding out factors affecting the low and high voters' turnout during the polls. The study will cover the entire state for analysis of the data," Talule added.

The study includes overall voters, schedule caste and schedule tribe reservations and voters, women reservation and voters, literacy rate, area's development/ per capita income , regional or district history turnout.

It is probably the first time that a state EC has ordered such a study. "The commission wants to increase the participation of people in the democratic process and voter awareness programmes will depend on the outcomes of the study," he said.

"Developed areas of Mumbai and Thane have low voters' turnout, generally below 45 per cent, despite high literacy rates. Kolhapur, the region with the highest per capita income, always has a high turnout. These aspects will be studied," he said.

The study will also include the procedures in foreign countries which have high voters' turnout like the US and some European countries.