Kamal Ghorui
CHENNAI: Nearly 20,000 more voters turned up at polling booths across 16 constituencies on April 23 than in the 2021 Assembly election, held at Covid-19 second wave peak.On Saturday, after re-verifying polling-station data and adding postal ballots, the ECI put the total votes polled in Chennai at 24.41 lakh. Postal ballots — including those cast at home by the elderly, people on essential duty, election staff and police personnel — accounted for 20,189 votes.Together with postal ballots, the increase in 2026 works out to 24,560 votes over 2021. The rise in the voting percentage is not only due to the SIR (special intensive revision), which pruned the city’s rolls from 48 lakh to 28.3 lakh, but also because more people turned up to vote in eight of the 16 constituencies.
This year’s trend reflects both continuity and change from 2021. Voting percentages remained high in R K Nagar (90.56) and Perambur (89.74). But, while Perambur — where TVK leader Vijay is contesting — polled 3,662 more votes than last time, R K Nagar saw 6,103 fewer votes cast. With 2.03 lakh votes, Perambur logged the highest number of votes in the city, followed by Velachery with 1.83 lakh, a constituency that recorded the lowest turnout in 2021. Chief minister M K Stalin’s Kolathur recorded 1.82 lakh votes. Besides having the third-highest number of votes, Kolathur also posted the biggest increase between the two polls, adding 10,726 votes. Psephologists say these additions could prove crucial in a city where several constituencies have historically been decided by wafer-thin margins. “We have a third player this time, and margins may get narrow. It is a seat-byseat poll, and who splits whose votes — and who manages to retain their base — will decide the result,” said Arun Krishnamurthy, psephologist with Krish Info Media.In 2021, the DMK won T Nagar by just 137 votes; in 2016, Perambur was decided by a margin of 519 votes. In at least six constituencies — including Anna Nagar, Virugambakkam, Thiru-Vi-Ka Nagar, T Nagar, Harbour and Thiruvottiyur — victory margins were below 5,000 votes in 2016. Yet, citizen participation gap in the city remains stark. This year too, 4.7 lakh did not vote, a number slightly higher than electorate of Madhavaram.GCC commissioner J Kumaragurubaran said, “SIR is the best SVEEP event GCC has done. If we had pushed harder with awareness, we could have touched 90%.”
