Students taking selfie with squirrel mascot at the Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation programme held at Bharathidasan Government College for Women in Puducherry.
| Photo Credit: S.S. KUMAR
The digital atlas developed by the Elections Department using Geographical Information System (GIS) tools has mapped at least 185 polling booths across the Union Territory that registered less than 75% voter turnout in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
The data is being used to recalibrate election awareness campaigns to maximise polling in the Lok Sabha election on April 19. These low electoral participation pockets have been at the centre of intensified Systematic Voters’ Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) initiatives over the past few weeks.
With the electorate in the Union Territory, which has 30 Assembly constituencies, pegged at 10,23,699 voters, the overarching theme of the Elections Department is 100% ethical with informed voting and a carbon-neutral, sustainable elections.
The targeted awareness campaigns, officials believe, are the key to push voters to exercise their democratic right.
The digital atlas charts out the low voter turnout areas according to data from the previous Parliamentary elections. These GIS “heat maps” that visually represent the low turnout areas across the 30 Assembly constituencies at the booth-level have been circulated among field functionaries to run targeted motivational campaigns.
“This granular-level data at the booth-level will help sharpen focus on the relatively low turnout zones within a constituency while running voter awareness campaigns,” said P. Jawahar, Chief Electoral Officer.
Rather counter-intuitively, several pockets with low voter turnout fall within some of the highly urbanised Assembly constituencies.
“Many areas where we ran intensified voter awareness campaigns fall in urbanised constituencies, ”said A. Kulothungan, District Collector and District Election Officer.
30 booths
The constituency-wise breakdown of voter turnout identifies at least 30 booths each in Muthialpet, Raj Bhavan, Ouppalam, Kamaraj Nagar, Kalapet, and Lawspet. The heat maps show that voter turnout was in the 55% -70% range in polling stations spread out in urban constituencies such as Kadirgamam, Thattanchavady, Kamaraj Nagar, Kalapet and Lawspet. Nellithope has only a small area with 55%-61% voter turnout while the Orleanpet and Mudaliarpet segments have limited number of areas where the least voter turnout percentage is at around 70%.
On the other hand, several populous suburban segments with high voting percentages still house pockets that have reported under par turnout. Constituencies like Ozhukarai and Villianur, which have historically had high turnout, contain pockets where the voter turnout was in the 58% -73% range. In contrast, there was just a solitary polling booth with less than 75% voter turnout in the entire spread of three three suburban segments of Mannadipet, Thirubhuvanai and Oussudu.
In Karaikal region, which has five Assembly seats, Karaikal North, Karaikal South and Neravy TR Pattinam segments are dotted with polling stations with 55% -61% turnout,—about 39 booths mapped—while voter turnout was largely above 75% barring a few places in Thirunallar where the percentage is in the 67-73% range.
Mahe region has several areas with 55%-58% voter turnout in 2019, indicating the need to scale up awareness missions in 29 booths, while Yanam featured a fairly uniform spread of high turnout to the exception of a small area with about 55% participation and another with 70% turnout.
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