Low turnout in Uttarakhand remains a cause of concern

Highest percentage of 63.50% was in Haridwar constituency

PrashantNews

The final voting percentage in Uttarakhand for the five Lok Sabha seats where polling was held on Friday was 55.89 percent, a top government official said on Saturday.

This was slightly 2.33 percent more than the yesterday’s figure of 53.56 percent, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Uttarakhand Vijay Kumar Jogdande said. But the fact remained that a sizable population in the hill state chose not to participate in the dance of democracy, which remained a cause of concern.

More than 83 lakh Electorate in Uttarakhand were eligible for the voting which was held in the first of the seven-phased elections culminating on June 1. The results will be declared on June 4.

Barring a couple of booths where long queues were seen, the voting was slow in the morning. However, as the day progressed, the medium to brisk voting was seen in many polling booths in the state.

Earlier, Nainital was ahead of other constituencies in terms of the voting percentage. But in the final figures, Haridwar took the lead with 63.50 percent votes. Nainital was at the second place with 61.35 percent.

Tehri was at the third place with 52.57 percent and Pauri at the fourth position with 50.84. Almora was at the fifth place with lowest vote percentage of 46.94 percent.

In 2019 elections, the total voting percentage was 61.88 percent in Uttarakhand.

Anoop Nautiyal, a social activist and founder of Dehradun-based SDC Foundation, who had been appealing to the people to exercise their franchise on April 19, said it was very concerning.

Nautiyal said the reasons may be many like marriages, farming and other factors like boycott but the election commission should seriously find out why the voting percentage was abysmally low through surveys.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami has stated that the voting percentage was low due to various factors like marriages and farming, But he made it clear that it was not very low.

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