The much-awaited Kolkata Municipal Corporation polls — due since 2020 — will be held on Sunday.
All the stakeholders in the polls, from the state election commission to the political parties in the fray, are worried about voter turnout.
According to the poll panel, the city has 40,38,357 voters spread across 144 wards from where 950-odd candidates are contesting to book their berths as councillors.
“If the turnout figure touches 60 per cent, that itself will be an achievement...,” said a poll panel official.
Over the years, the poll percentage in Calcutta has hovered around 65 per cent. In the recently held Assembly polls, the voter turnout was around 64 per cent.
The Opposition parties, especially the BJP, had made a lot of noise in the run up to the polls about security bandobast and had even moved the high court and the Supreme Court, albeit unsuccessfully, to ensure deployment of central forces. Several BJP leaders, however, admitted in private that their main concern was about voter turnout. “Most Kolkatans are aware that the outcome is a foregone conclusion... In such a scenario, our biggest challenge is to get our voters out of their homes and take them to the polling booths,” said a senior BJP leader.
In this year’s polls, the Trinamul is the only party that fielded candidates in all the 144 wards. The BJP has 142 candidates in the fray while the Left and the Congress have 125 and 121 nominees respectively.
The Opposition campaign for the polls was at best lackluster. The BJP, which emerged as the main Opposition by bagging 77 seats in the Assembly polls, didn’t bring any of its high-profile campaigners for the KMC polls.
“The voter turnout is likely to come down drastically as people consider this to be a one-sided election...,” said a city-based political observer, echoing the concerns of the poll panel.
The elections to the KMC are important to the state election commission. “If the state poll panel can hold a free and fair poll this time, it can logically contest the allegation that it is an extended body of Nabanna,” said an official.
The stake of Trinamul is much bigger as it has to prove that it has turned into a responsible ruling party after the complaints of muscle flexing were leveled against its cadres in the 2018 panchayat polls.
For the BJP, the outcome would assess its strength in Calcutta and the Left Front is to prove that it still has its support base in the city.