Firsttime voters Bhavya and Nikhila proudly show off the evidence of dipping their hands in the ink-pond of democracy at a polling booth in Malleshwaram in Bangalore on Sunday. The so-called knowledge capital of the country, allegedly swelling with literate, educated masses, again showed scant interest or involvement in the civic body elections with barely one in two casting their vote.
Photograph: Karnataka Photo News
Also read: An epitaph to the literate, educated middle-class
churumuri 
Good pic. Hope first-time voters go beyond voting and take active part in civic activities.
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I preferred to watch F1 followed by IPL circus … instead of voting for dummy representatives and farcical exercise. The constituency was reserved for SC Woman and most candidates were wives or sister-in-laws or some other relatives of hooligans in one form or other.
What kind of madness is this … this so called dopey democracy is making me vote some rubbish candidates (its not by the people but by reserved people) …. bullcrap, I abstain!
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Its okay to NOT vote! Check http://bit.ly/bPIrfz
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People who elect corrupt politicians need to be shot. We even made democracy look bad.
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For each vote that the first timers have been able to catch, ten of the existing voters have been denied the opportunity
Why does this complaint surfaces at each election. There appears to be something basically wrong with the system of preparing voters list, changing of the booth wise voters and allocation of voters among the booths
Is it a malady beyond solution? Should not the electoral authorities be more diligent to let all eligible voters cast their votes?
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Amen…and they should give the finger to the non-performing politicians.
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It could have been amazing if MF is inked while voting ;)
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They should have shown the next finger for politicians
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The database with Election Comission needs a lot of cleaing up. You cannot take the 45% voting at its face value.
For instance, I know of a family where there are 5 votes.
Ouf of which two are dead. Two more have shifted out of Bangalroe some 8 years back.
In effect, there is only one vote out of 5
But when you tabulate the voting percentage, 5 out of 6 will be deemed absent.
And the resulting voting percentage ends up wrong.
In my area, almost everyone I know has voted. Even in my office. So,. where are the abseentess, actually>?
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Nice to see a couple of youngsters displaying their index fingers. If the turnout was any indication Bangaloreans mostly raised their middle fingers to the election.
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Agree with you on the need to vote.
But dont agree with you on the swelling educated class in Blr.
Most of the educated class here dont have votes, they are not in voter lists here. The people who are actually in the voter list are either dead or migrated to other parts of the world.
Yours truly has been living in Bangalore for the past 8 yrs but casts his vote in Hyderabad.
I know atleast two dozens of people who cast their votes in other parts of the country as they hold voter cards of those constituencies.
Ofcourse there are many educated folks here who dont even possess voter id cards.
Need of the hour is to update the voter list every election and make the process simple.
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It is easy for the people sitting in comforts, blaming everybody under the son except self, passing comments, finding fault with everybody, everything, criticise everything as if they are great. Of course, there are lot of shortcomings in the system. If you we want to set it right, cause reform and bring improvements, first vote and then demand. The voting should be at least 80 per cent. Then only we the people can demand. At least, give it a try. If one cannot walk one furlong to vote, he or she deserves to be ruled by the people who are elected by the rest of the people.
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Let it not be the first and the last for them, they should do it every election and all first timers should follow suit.
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@MMM, you bring up a good point. While it is true that by and large the educated class is indifferent towards elections, problems such as the one you mentioned can discourage even the few who want to vote.
There needs to be some kind of registration process every 5 years or so, that would enable voters to be eligible for elections in that time period.
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It is the ones who do not go out and vote who critisize everything about governence. And it is old story now that women candidates are relatives of somebody or the other. Unfortunately we dont know or dont want to know about the revolution women have brought in village panchayats. Illiterate or school drop outs have done such remarkable job in bringing cleanliness, clean toilets to villages in Karnataka. I believe that we are in general, grumblers. Grumbling all the time, without making even an effort to do something about things we think are badly managed..
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MMM. Good point. Shouldn’t Nandan Nilkeni with help of Murthy saar’s office first tackle this once and for all and prepare a correct genuine voters’ list. Then you will see the figure going up.
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Indu Ramesh,
>>It is the ones who do not go out and vote who critisize everything about governence.>>
To quote George Carlin here, it is actually the people who do not vote who have legitimate right to criticise the elected ones, not the people who voted…remember you voted because you wanted the guy to come to office in the first place..now if he turns out to be useless and corrupt you have to smile and bear with him for the rest of his tenure :)
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Indu Ramesh:
>It is the ones who do not go out and vote who critisize everything about governence.
The reality is every one criticizes the govt. whether they vote or not. Also there is another aspect about voting that most people miss out.
What most people don’t understand is – Voting is neither a right or a duty.
It is just a privilege or an entitlement given to REGISTERED Voters. The Representation of People act of 1950, doesn’t speak of Voting as a right. Neither does our constitution. You can choose to register as a voter or choose not to!
Just because you are registered doesn’t mean, you can vote. For various reasons people don’t get to vote even if they go to the booth. They don’t have any remedy in Law, because it is not a RIGHT. A voter can’t force the election commission to grant him the Vote, even if he is registered, even if it is EC which has made a mistake in Electoral roles.
So, any talk of punishing non-voters is a non-starter as it is bad in law.
Election is an exercise in statistics. If substantial sample votes, then it is successful exercise. Statistics tells us that there can be high confidence rate, if the choice of questions are clear and sample taken is a cross section of people. So, Just because another 20-30% more people will vote, won’t mean the results would be any different.
So, all talk of only people who voted having a right to have grievance is not only ignorant, but also dangerous. What about a 18 year old adult, who is a major, but couldn’t get himself registered yet? For that matter what above 30% of Indian citizens who are below 18years of age?
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sexy!
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