NGO to study poor response

Hyderabad: Low voter turnout worries many, but very few want to know its root causes. Shocked by the lower turnout of voters, a few community organisations are trying to find the factors behind this.

An NGO has decided to approach voters of different localities to ask why they did not turn up to vote, and chalk out an action plan to prevent such an occurrence.

Secretary, Mehr Organisation, Affan Quadri said, “We have to realize that today’s young adults are less politically interested and informed but we can’t leave them there. We have to interact with them and create awareness about the system of governance in a democratic country and the importance of voting.”

He said that if a voter thought that none of the contesting candidates was eligible to become his representative, he has the choice to reject all of them and show his displeasure with the option of NOTA, but not voting was not a wise notion.

He said the NGO would ascertain lapses and faults on the part of the agencies involved in the election that could have kept voters away. He said that they plan to interact with experts and intellectuals to draw a plan to convince them to participate in the electoral political process.

Dr Ahsan bin Mohammed al Hamoomi, secretary of FOCUS, said that according to conventional wisdom democratic consolidation depresses voter turnout, but this is not true. In his view, urban citizens had become dilatory.

“Our youth is habituated to availing services at their doorsteps and order even biryani using apps. How you can expect them to walk to the polling booth to vote? The Election Commission should discover new options for voting, otherwise in the future, this trend will wrap rural areas very soon,” he said.

Anticipating the situation, religious scholars and community leaders have started creating awareness among their disciples. Imams of mosques appeal to citizens to vote while delivering the Juma sermons in mosques.

Their organisations will chalk out a plan to mobilize like-minded organizations and launch an apolitical mass movement involving religious personalities much before the elections to check the decline in voting, he said.