Voter turnout defies spirit of democracy

LUDHIANA: Every year the Republic Day is celebrated with much fanfare in the city, but residents remain callous towards the basic spirit of the day. Voting pattern in the general elections and assembly polls in the past show that a sizable number of them do not exercise their right to vote.
In the elections held for the Parliament and well as the state assembly since January 26, 1950, the average voting percentage in the district has not crossed 60%.The average voting percentage of Parliament Elections held since 1950 is 55% whereas that of the state assembly is 59.45%.
In the parliamentary elections, except the year 1992 and 1999, the voter turnout in the district has been registered above 50% but in state assembly, except for 1951, 1980, 1992, 1997 and 2002, the voting percentage has been above 60%.
Ironically, the highest turnout of votes for parliamentary elections was 75.47% in 1977 after the emergency whereas, the highest voters turnout in the city was 73.47% in the assembly elections held in 1967.
However, experts feel that the reason that more than 40% of voters refrain from exercising their voting right is that they have been disillusioned from the present political leadership. Commenting on it, SS Chana, a retired officer of Indian Forest Service, said that the only reason behind it was that the political leaders and the system had failed to deliver results to the general public.
Similarly, Rohit Sabharwal, president of Anti-corruption and Crime Investigation Cell, an NGO, said that the obvious reason was that the general public does not have trust in political leaders, however, he asserted that lately more number of young people have started taking interest in electoral politics.