Will Bengaluru buck the trend and come out in large numbers to vote today?

Bengaluru seats in Lok Sabha elections face low turnout, with keen contests and high-profile battles in 2019.

Seats in Bengaluru mostly record the lowest turnout in the State. As the city goes to polls on Friday (April 26), will this change, is the moot question.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Bengaluru North, Bengaluru Central, and Bengaluru South recorded a turnout of 54.66%, 54.28%, and 53.47%, respectively, while Bengaluru Rural registered 64.9%. Turnout in urban and rural seats has mostly been less than the State average.

This time, the four Bengaluru seats combined have 1,06,54,390 voters, of whom 54.67 lakh are male voters, 51.85 lakh are female voters, and 1,779 are of other genders. Of them, 1.49 lakh are young voters, most of whom will be exercising their franchise for the first time.

While the city has been electing BJP MPs in all three of its seats since 2009, the rural seat has been a Congress stronghold, the sole seat the party won in 2019. However, all four Bengaluru seats are seeing keen contests this time, and parties have said there is an “open contest”, raising interest in the polls.

However, the city has not seen much enthusiasm on the ground, which many fear may lead to low turnout. There are fears that the rising mercury and the polling day being a Friday, leading to a long weekend, may also contribute to low turnout.

The contest between Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar’s brother and sole incumbent Congress MP D.K. Suresh and former director of Jayadeva Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences and Research and son-in-law of H.D. Deve Gowda, C.N. Manjunath, contesting on a BJP ticket, is a high-voltage battle grabbing most eyeballs.

Two-time Udupi Chikkamagaluru BJP MP Shobha Karandlaje is taking on M.V. Rajeev Gowda in Bengaluru North constituency, which has the highest number of voters — 31.74 lakh. Three-time incumbent BJP MP P.C. Mohan is fighting Mansoor Ali Khan of the Congress in Bengaluru Central constituency, while the daughter of senior Congress leader and Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy, Sowmya Reddy, who lost the recent Assembly election from Jayanagar by a narrow margin in a disputed result, is taking on Tejasvi Surya of the BJP in Bengaluru South constituency.