Maharashtra elections: Awareness campaigns fail to generate votes in Bandra

MUMBAI: At 43.9%, Bandra West was among those constituencies that recorded the poorest voter turnout in the city. A further bifurcation shows that areas in the constituency such as Bandra Reclamation and Nargis Dutt Nagar saw even less than 40% turnout. This came as a surprise, especially since the assembly is known to have several resident associations whose members were active in spreading the message of asking people to vote.

On election day, when TOI visited various polling centres in the constituency such as St Anne's School at Pali Hill, Mount Mary Convent High School and St Stanislaus High School on Hill Road, no queues were to be seen. It was at a few centres such as Supari Tank Municipal School that people began to queue up but only from early evening. AGNI trustee Shyama Kulkarni said the Election Commission (EC) took great effort to ensure a smooth voting day but voters failed to come out in large numbers. Vidya Vaidya from H-West Federation said the EC had a meeting with advanced locality management members, asking them to pass on the message to vote.

Asif Zakeria, Congress candidate from the constituency, said low turnout at areas such as Nargis Dutt Nagar showed that a lot of minority community members did not vote. Sources said razing of slums had caused resentment. "The PMC Bank issue and Aarey tree felling also upset people. We hoped for a better turnout, though, as the ward has several well-informed and active residents," said Zakeria. BJP MLA Ashish Shelar said the low turnout was due to lack of opposition in the constituency.