Where Have All The Voters Of Hyderabad Gone?

In yesterday’s Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Elections – 2016, only 42.5 percent Hyderabadis have cast their Vote. This is despite an intensive drive by Election authorities, responsible citizens, social organizations, political parties and contestants to educate people on the importance of voting. Further to facilitate easy participation in voting, yesterday was declared a holiday and polling booths were set up closest to all voters.

Some people may have very valid reasons for not being able to Vote but when a large majority do not Vote it gives rise to lot of criticism. Today’s newspapers were full of such criticism. Some papers have called our City a Lazy City, one paper said it is an Irresponsible City, yet another paper said least voting percentage was mostly in well developed localities suggesting the people there are Underdeveloped, for them an Election holiday is for sleep and fun and not for voting. There are also some funny cartoons. When people of our city are being criticized in this manner it hurts a lot.

On my part I see that my family takes part in every Election. From the comfort of my house, I downloaded GHMC Voter Slips for my family a few days back. And yesterday we cast our votes without any inconvenience under 3 minutes at our Polling Station located few feet away from our house. I wish everyone does this.

Just a week back on 25th January on the occasion of National Voter’s Day, I posted an article titled - Today is a day to remind you to ‘Vote in Every Election’. And towards the end of that article I made an appeal…“Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Elections – 2016’ are being held on 2nd February 2016. Hope the turnout will be large and the best candidates will get elected and do well for the Twin Cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad”. Unfortunately Voting has not taken place in a big way, but I hope the elected Municipal Councilors and the Mayor will do exceedingly good for our City as never before.