Lok Sabha polls: Mumbai votes, half-heartedly including celebrities

Lok Sabha polls: Mumbai votes, half-heartedly including celebrities

mangaloretoday.com/ NDTV

Mumbai, April 24, 2014 : A bevy of celebrities, Sachin Tendulkar to Shah Rukh Khan, dutifully casting their votes across Mumbai was not enough. Final figures say only half of Mumbai’s registered voters turned up to elect their representatives for the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

 

Till 6 pm, when the polling ended for the day, the average turnout from the six constituencies in India’s financial capital stood at a mere 53 per cent.

These are the final voting figures: Mumbai North - 52 per cent, Mumbai North-West - 50 per cent, Mumbai North-East - 53 per cent, Mumbai North-Central - 55 per cent, Mumbai South-Central - 55 per cent and Mumbai South - 54 per cent. However, there is some good news hidden in today’s number. In the last elections, the overall voting percentage was 41.4. So, this election saw a jump of 11.6 per cent!

 

The Mumbai voters’ apathy, for reasons not yet known, matches that of their counterparts’ in Bangalore, who too seemed not too keen come out, queue up outside a polling booth and press the EVM button.

This is bad news for the bevy of celebrity candidates that were in fray for the six seats in the ’maximum city’, such as Priya Dutt, Milind Deora, Medha Patkar, Poonam Mahajan, Meera Sanyal, Mahesh Manjrekar, Sanjay Nirupam, Kirit Somaiya, Mayank Gandhi, Gurudas Kamat and Rakhi Sawant.

But why blame one city alone. Turns out the rest of the Maharashtra (13 seats) too voted reluctantly.

These are the final figures: Nandurbar (ST) - 62 per cent, Dhule - 62 per cent, Jalgaon - 56 per cent, Raver - 58 per cent, Jalna - 63 per cent, Aurangabad -59 per cent, Dindori (ST) - 64 per cent, Nashik - 60 per cent, Palghar (ST)- 60 per cent, Bhiwandi - 43 per cent, Kalyan - 42 per cent, Thane--52 per cent and Raigad - 64 per cent.