Despite an awareness campaign run by the district administration and the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, the municipal polls recorded a final voting percentage of 59.41%, as against 52.48 % in the year 2007, which is about 6% higher than the previous Urban Local Body (ULB) polls.
Out of 17,26,158 voters in the 98 wards of GVMC limits, as many as 10,25,442 voters exercised their franchise, while 7,00,716 voters did not take part in voting.
On the day of elections, voting started on a very slow pace. By 1 p.m., after almost six hours of voting, the polling percentage was just 36.09%. Officials expected the voting percentage to increase later in the day. However, only 20% more votes were polled in the last four hours till 5 p.m. The final turnout was declared to be 59.41%.
Out of 98 wards, only eight wards have registered over 70% voting. Among them, two wards are from Zone I (Bheemili), three wards are from Zone VI (Gajuwaka), two from Zone VII (Anakapalle) and one is from Zone VIII (Vepagunta).
Ward 80 in Zone VII (Anakapalle) saw the highest voting percentage of 79.11%. The second and third highest voting percentage was reported from Ward 77 (Zone VI) with 76.83 % and Ward 88 (Zone VI) with 76.49 %. It may be noted that Ward 77 and 88 cover areas of Vadlapudi, Kanithi, Old Vadlapudi, Satyavanipalem, parts of Duvvada, Steel Plant School, Islampeta, Pittavanipalem, Appikonda, and Chepalapalem.
Meanwhile, Ward 4, which includes five panchayats – K. Nagarapalem, Kapuluppada, Nidigattu, JV Agraharam, and Chepaluppada, which were merged into the corporation, witnessed 72.93% voting.
Seven wards saw less than 50% voting. Of these, three are from Zone V (Gnanapuram). Ward 40 from Zone V saw the least voting percentage of 19.05%. Out of 20,142 voters, including 6,848 female voters, only 3,838 voters exercised their franchise. It was learnt that out of 14 polling stations in the ward, most of them were seen vacant throughout the day.
Similarly, Wards 51 and 52 in Zone V saw 47.56% and 48.24% turnout respectively. Ward 14 in Zone III, Ward 29 in Zone IV, Ward 78 in Zone VI and Ward 93 in Zone VIII also recorded less than 50% turnout.
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