The Election Commission announced on Friday that it has identified 266 parliamentary constituencies, with 215 located in rural regions, experiencing low voter turnout. In response, the Commission is devising targeted strategies to bolster participation rates in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
Municipal commissioners from prominent cities, along with designated district election officers (DEOs) from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, convened to deliberate on strategies aimed at increasing voter engagement and participation in both urban and rural Lok Sabha constituencies.
At its conference on low voter turnout here, the EC said 266 parliamentary constituencies -- 215 rural and 51 urban -- with low voter turnout have been identified. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, eleven states and union territories, namely Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, and Jharkhand, recorded a voter turnout below the national average of 67.40 percent.
Addressing the participants, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar stressed that 'one size fits all' approach will not work and different strategies have to be worked out for different areas and segments.