Maharashtra’s cities might present the worst of urban apathy, but they are not exclusively in this inglorious club. In the Haryana assembly polls, while the state average was close to 68%, the assembly constituencies (AC) of Gurgaon and Faridabad barely scraped past 52-53%. In the 2019 assembly election in Jharkhand, urban segments in Ranchi, Bokaro, Dhanbad, and Jamshedpur lagged the state’s 64.38% by about 10 percentage points. Out of a total of 78 urban seats in assembly elections of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, and Rajasthan last year, 71 performed below their respective overall state levels. Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad, an elite residency, had a staggering 25-percentage-point gap with the state’s impressive overall turnout of 72%.

Urban Bengaluru, with its tech professionals and middle-class concentration, has earned the disrepute of low polling. Bommanahalli in South Bengaluru trailed the state’s turnout by 26 percentage points in the last assembly election. That all 24 assembly segments in three urban parliamentary constituencies in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) performed below the state turnout, while five of the eight segments in rural Bengaluru went past the state average, is telling.

In 2022, Gujarat suffered a four percentage point decline in turnout compared to 2017, largely because of low voting in urban areas like Ahmedabad, Surat, Rajkot, and Jamnagar. Gandhidham presented the worst case with a 48.14% turnout. Himachal Pradesh, in the same year, registered a record voting of 75.78%, but urban Shimla had a low of 62.53%. The story in Delhi has been similar. Even Chennai and parts of Kolkata, capitals of states that see high polling, have seen low turnouts.

There could be any number of reasons for not voting — missing registration, harsh weather, long queues, and even scepticism about politics. There may be a case for parties to reorder their agenda to appeal to the urban population. The idea of remote voting can be pursued. But none of these are a panacea to urban apathy. For the last 10 years, the most critical among the voters have been offered the None of the Above (NOTA) choice on (EVM) to reject all contestants if they wish.

ECI recognises the problem, and has offered remedies such as identification of pockets of voting deficit, innovative Turnout Implementation Plans (TIPs), enhancing IT-based facilitation, engaging with residential societies, communication campaigns featuring popular icons, and roping in metro commissioners to reach out to voters. Election managers have tried to take polling stations close to residential areas, created comforts around polling booths, and made waiting in queues less cumbersome. But arrangements to ease voting will fail if the educated urbanite refrains from exercising her democratic right and duty. By underlining that, this time, the poll is on a Wednesday in Maharashtra, chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar tried overturning a rather common but pathetic reason behind low urban polling — poll scheduling leading to weekend getaways.

Nearly 43% of the over one lakh polling stations in Maharashtra are in urban areas. Come November 20, it will be watched if city dwellers overcome past habits and smartly queue up to buttress their claims of concerns over governance and democracy.

Akshay Rout is former director general, Election Commission of India. The views expressed are personal