Mangaluru: The Mangaluru City Corporation (MCC) election registered a 59.67 per cent voter turnout on Tuesday, November 12, when the polling procedure was completed at 5 PM.
The voting began at around 7 AM and voter turnout during the day was recorded as follows- 10.75 per cent by 9 AM, 24.50 per cent by 10 AM, 39.50 per cent by 1 PM and 46 per cent by 3 PM. The voter turnout was slightly high in the evening, which helped the voter turnout reach 59.67 per cent by the scheduled end time of 5 PM.
In order to facilitate the voters, Dakshina Kannada district Deputy Commissioner Sindhu B Rupesh had announced a holiday for all schools, colleges and government institutions on November 12. However, the voters turned up at the polling centres in numbers lesser than those seen during the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
It can be recalled that the Dakshina Kannada district had recorded a voter turnout of 77.90 per cent during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and 77.63 per cent during the 2018 Assembly election. Evidently, voters who showed an interest during the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections did not show the same interest for the MCC election.
The district administration had launched many voter awareness programmes ahead of the Lok Sabha election, which fetched good results. However, no such awareness programmes were undertaken by the district administration ahead of the MCC election, resulting in a poor voter turnout.
Meanwhile, no untoward incidents were reported in any of the 60 wards of the MCC, except for a small verbal fight that broke out between Congress MLC Ivan D’Souza and a few BJP workers at the Jeppu polling booth.
DC Rupesh thanked all those who were involved in the election procedure and those helped conduct a peaceful election.
Counting scheduled on November 14
The counting for the election will be held at the Rosario High School on November 14. A total of 180 candidates contested in the election and their political future will be decided on that day. Both the Congress and BJP had fielded their candidates from all 60 wards.
