Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], January 15 : Singer and music composer Vishal Dadlani, who arrived Thursday morning at a polling booth in Mumbai to cast his vote, shared his disappointment over the low "public presence" at the booth during the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections.
After casting his vote, Dadlani spoke to the media outside the polling station and expressed that it was "shameful" to see so little "public presence" at the booth and also mentioned that because of this, he has now stopped "asking people to vote."
"I've stopped asking people to vote. What I'm seeing here is that there's hardly any public presence. There are more officials inside; it's so shameful. Every Indian should feel pain seeing this. If we don't take care of our country, if we don't take responsibility for it, then what's happening will continue to happen...," he said.
Talking about the importance of elections and democracy, Dadlani added, "Hopefully, whoever wins will hold the elections on time. This is very important for the country, for democracy. But given the state of our city in the last few days, the hope is that things will improve."
Meanwhile, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections recorded a slow start on Thursday, with only a 7.12 per cent voter turnout recorded till 9:30 AM. However, these early trends have shown almost double the number of male voters casting their vote in comparison to women.
The highest voter turnout was recorded in Ward number 18 in Mumbai city at 11.57 per cent. Whereas, ward no 162 recorded the lowest turnout at 1.68 per cent.
A total of 7,36,996 voters have cast their votes out of a total 1,03,44,315. According to official data released by the State Election Commission (SEC), nearly twice as many men as women have cast their votes. 4,54,539 men have cast their vote in BMC elections, compared to 2,82,433 women.
Polling began at 7:30 am on Thursday, January 15, and will continue until 5:30 pm. The counting of votes is scheduled to take place on Friday, January 16.
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor