70 pc votes cast in Uttarakhand; tension mounts for BJP

Bright sunshine and a let up in the cold conditions resulted in the highest ever turnout of voters in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand on Monday.

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"Nearly 70 per cent of the state's 63 lakh voters came out to cast their vote," state chief electoral officer Radha Raturi told media persons.

"The Lok Sabha election in 2007 witnessed a turnout of 62 per cent  while it stood at about 59 per cent in 2002," she pointed out.

Evidently, the weather gods were kind on the voter.

'But for an improvement in the weather conditions, the voting would not have been as good,' admitted a senior government official.

Chief Minister B C Khanduri had in the run up to the polls expressed his fears that this year's unusually high snowfall could render several hilly areas inaccessible.

While the Election Commission is euphoric about the high turnout, which the poll machinery is ready to attribute to its efforts to encourage voting, it is seen as a bad signal for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

"Higher the turnout, worse for the BJP," observed a senior political analyst. 

"My reading about the people of this state is that they turn out in high numbers to vote essentially against an incumbent regime and there were several good reasons for a high anti-incumbency against the sitting BJP," he added.

The BJP regime had taken much beating largely on account of the tremendous rise in corruption levels and poor governance during the chief ministership of Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank. While the BJP leadership tried to salvage things by replacing Nishank with a clean Maj Gen B C Khanduri, it was rather late in the day.

Meanwhile, the Congress party pumped in all its resources and its star campaigners, including party chief Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Shiela Dikshit and even Pranab Mukherjee, to assure the people of Uttarakhand that they were capable of providing better governance than the BJP.

Which way the people's verdict turns will, however, remain locked in the electronic voting machines until March 6 when the Election Commission goes for simultaneous counting of votes of each of the five states going to poll over the next one month.