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Gujarat Elections: Headlines, December 2, 2022

Friday, Dec 2, 2022: CEC disappointed over ‘poor voter turnout’ in the 1st Phase of Elections in Gujarat

Narendrabhai Modi in a Roadshow at Ahmedabad

Narendrabhai Modi has been holding major roadshows in a number of cities in Gujarat during these elections. On 1st December, he held a marathon road show of about 54 Km and of 4 hours in Ahmedabad. He is 72 years old but he did not show signs of tiredness even at the end of the long roadshow.

He followed it up with a roadshow of about 10 Km on 2nd December 2022 in the remaining constituencies of Ahmedabad.

Earlier in the evening of Sunday, 27th November 2022, he had gone through a 27 Km long roadshow from Surat airport to Varaccha, the city’s hub for diamond cutting and polishing. Thousands of people gather on both sides of the road during these roadshows and it helps energize the party workers for working at every booth to bring voters for voting.

 POORER TURNOUT of VOTERS in 2022 as compared with that in 2017: The Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar has expressed concerns over the poor turnout of voters during the first phase of the Gujarat Assembly elections.

According to the Election Commission of India, Surat, Rajkot, and Jamnagar had recorded lower than the state average which stood at 63.3% in the first phase. During the 2017 polls, the voting percentage in the first phase of the election stood at 66.79%.

Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar

The election commission however noted that the voting percentage increased in many constituencies but the average voter turnout figure could have supposedly been affected by ‘urban apathy’.

CEC Kumar has further urged voters on behalf of the ECI to come out in large numbers during the second phase of the polls scheduled on 5 December. The ECI pointed out that there was a noticeable gap in voting turnout between

rural and urban constituencies. It was as wide as 34.85%.

The ECI, in an attempt to mitigate this challenge of urban apathy, has directed all Chief Electoral Officers to identify the reasons for low voter turnout. CEC has further urged all polling stations to carry out targeted awareness interventions to amplify voting percentage.

The high-voltage campaigning for the second and final phase of the Gujarat Assembly elections ended at 5 pm on Saturday. The main contenders in the elections are the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Congress, and Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

93 constituencies will go to polls on Monday, 5th December 2022, spread across 14 districts of north and central Gujarat including Ahmedabad, Vadodara, and Gandhinagar.

The first phase, for which voting had taken place on 1st December 2022, covered 89 seats in 19 districts. The counting of votes will take place on December 8.

                —  By Sachin Ashal

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