THE low voter turnout in Wednesday’s poll for the 16th Lok Sabha election is a strong indicator that the electorate is disenchanted about elections in general and this election in particular. For Meghalaya it has been a case of too many elections. Usually the voters in urban Meghalaya turn up early to cast their votes but this time around even at 8.30 am most polling stations had recorded very low turnout. The long queues were conspicuous by their absence. Gone is the celebratory mood that used to be part and parcel of voting day. The Chief Election Officer through the office of the Deputy Commissioner had pulled all the stops to woo voters in general and young and first time voters in particular but the response of the youth to this election was lacklustre.
The measure of how dull the election was could be gauged from the fact that polling officers had to wait for voters and not the other way round. In a few polling booths some polling officials had to stifle a yawn. A peek into the polling booths revealed that only the Congress Party had posted polling agents across all polling booths. Other political parties and candidates did not even consider it important to select polling agents and post them as watchdogs. This is an indicator that the usual frenzy and enthusiasm among the young to act as polling agents has also waned. That the Election Commission’s strict guidelines about how much money candidates can spend on a particular day is a killjoy has been loudly voiced by political party volunteers. They are irked by the idea of having to look behind their backs to see if they have violated some strange poll conduct. The Election Commission’s attempt to reduce the use of money power has succeeded only up to a point. Candidates still woo voters with money and how that money changes hands does not seem to interest the Commission. That is the biggest election spending and not the other paraphernalia such as posters, flags, number of vehicles used etc. Observation made by several voters is that they have lost hope in the system because whoever they have voted has failed them. So it’s the whole political, administrative and judicial system that needs to be addressed and not just the electoral system. That’s the bottom line.
