To encourage people to go to polling centres, cable TV operator snaps service

The final voting percentage at Dombivali and Kalyan rural stood at 48 per cent and 46 per cent, district officials said.

Nagpur: A groom Snehal Pophare along with bride Rashmi Nitnaware before casting their votes at a polling station during the Maharashtra Assembly election, in Nagpur, Monday, Oct. 21, 2019. (PTI Photo)(PTI10_21_2019_000334B)

The Election Commission of India’s call for a larger voters’ turnout found resonance from unlikely quarters. On Monday, a local cable TV operator in Kalyan-Dombivali rural area disconnected the connection of the entire area to encourage more local residents to visit polling booths. More than five lakh consumers reportedly had no cable TV access for over three hours in the area.

“With the advent of cable channels and other viewing options, my customer base is now mostly in the villages,” Dilip Bhagat, director of Den Cable operators, a major cable TV provider in Kalyan-Dombivali area, said. “Villagers sit and watch movies or daily soaps and forget about whatever is happening outside. Even if they don’t forget, they wait for their shows or movies to end. The simple solution to this, is to shut down the cable,” Bhagat said.

On Monday, Bhagat shut off the channels around 3 pm. “We started streaming only after 6 pm. Some people complained, but it’s okay,” Bhagat, who has been running the cable network since 2009, said.

Denying that he had stalled the cable TV operation at the behest of any political party, Bhagat said he had done it as his “civic duty”. “We do it for every election, but this time it was necessary… We want people to be involved in the democratic process. Even if we can play a small role in taking the voting percentage closer to 50, it will be good,” he said.

While voters at Dombivali and Kalyan had started lining up at polling booths early during the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, on Monday there were barely a few voters at the booths here in the morning hours. “My friends and I had decided to go early, but I got slightly late. There’s no crowd at the polling centre, so I just walked in and out,” Vinay Halbe, a college student who voted for the first time in April, said. “This is my first Assembly election, so I was excited. But a lot of my classmates didn’t turn up. The novelty of casting votes is lost for them after the first time,” he said.

The final voting percentage at Dombivali and Kalyan rural stood at 48 per cent and 46 per cent, district officials said.