At 56%, New Delhi seat witnesses dismal turnout

NEW DELHI: On the day of polling, New Delhi witnessed the lowest voter turnout in the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Delhi. This year the New Delhi constituency saw nearly 56 per cent vote whereas in 2014 it was nearly 65 per cent voter turn out.

In the early morning, all the booths hardly had any voters but around 12 the turn out increased. However, being the VVIP zone it witnessed the lots of VVIP voters including, Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, President Ram Nath Kovind, and former Vice President Hamid Ansari among others. However, most of the VVIPs cast their vote by 9 AM in the morning.

"Here the early morning voting was lesser but most of the VVIPs came within 9 AM. We made the arrangements like that as per orders to finish the VVIP voters by 9 am," said an official. He also added that in the VVIP zone no news of EVM malfunctioning was reported.

This year BJP candidate was sitting MP Meenakshi Lekhi, Congress candidate was Ajay Maken and AAP candidate was Brijesh Goyal. This constituency has nearly 16.17 lakh voters some of them belong to the middle class and also this area has a large number of affluent people. Ten assembly seats fall under this constituency which includes the New Delhi, Vidhan Sabha assembly constituency too from where current Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal defeated his previous counterpart Congress party's Sheila Dikshit by a huge margin. The New Delhi constituency has a large number of markets like Connaught Place, Sarojini Nagar, Defence Colony, Khan Market, South Extension, Green Park and Hauz Khas. The trader community is nearly 40% of the total population of this constituency.