Delhi Tries to Lure Voters for City Elections When Delhi's polls open on Sunday for municipal elections, will the turnout be any better than last time? New efforts by the state election commission and grassroots organizations, including personalized "invitations" to vote and a campaign of television advertising, have been targeted at Delhi's historically apathetic voting public. Turnout in Delhi, like Mumbai, is notoriously low, with the last municipal elections netting only 42 percent of registered voters citywide, thanks in part to low voter turnout in affluent neighborhoods and disillusionment thanks to voter fraud and corruption. Already, this election cycle has seen a fair amount of chaos and violence, with one BJP party worker killed by a candidate of his own party on Wednesday night, and a Shiv Sena candidate attacked on Thursday. In the municipal elections, a candidate is voted in to each of the city's 272 municipal wards, and each ward has a registered voting block of anywhere between 40,000 to 60,000 voters. The municipal body carries out infrastructure projects and overseas roads, parking, sewage, sanitation, and public education, among other areas. People's Action, a voting advocacy group, organized "Meet the Candidate" events, coordinated through neighborhood Resident Welfare Associations, where each contesting candidate met with voters in an assembly. They also produced posters with the slogan, "If you don't vote, you don't count," which were distributed to neighborhoods. Vote for India, another voter mobilization group, organized more than 100 street plays in different neighborhoods to spur voter education. And the leaders of resident welfare associations have been conducting some informal polling of voting patterns in their areas. State Election Commissioner Rakesh Mehta has an optimistic goal of a 65 percent citywide voting rate. Reaching that will require bridging the divide between rich and poor areas, which tend to have drastically different rates. Election data from 2007 showed that ward by ward, the affluent colonies hovered at around 35 percent to 40 percent turnout, where lower class areas had closer to 50 percent. "These elections have been the playing ground for the lower middle class or slums, because they have a direct relationship with what the state has to offer," and rely on public services for basic needs said Sanjay Kaul, the founder of People's Action. That's not the case in an upscale colony because people are more insular. Ward 189 in South Delhi would seem to confirm that opinion. It includes various neighborhoods like the wealthy Greater Kailash II as well as the poorer Chirag Delhi. Rajnish Dewan, who is part of the GK-II Resident Welfare Association, said that of the roughly 11,000 registered voters in the neighborhood, only about 3,000 come out for elections, while he thinks neighboring Chirag Delhi has more of a turnout. "You know how villages are," he said, referring to Chirag Delhi, "those people are very close. And in the posh colonies like GKII, nobody knows who is staying in the next house. But he maintained that despite low turnout, GK-II residents have concerns of their own, the foremost being illegal parking and traffic congestion. Another factor to consider is the charged national political landscape, with hotly contested state assembly elections in March, and the Congress party and the BJP each with their eyes on the general election in 2014. Control of the MCD usually trades between the BJP and the Congress party every five years, with the BJP in the majority now. In the days leading up to the election, there has been a lot of mud slinging by party leaders on either side of the divide. Despite the name-calling, some voting rights activists say municipal elections are party-free, one place where voters focus on the issues at stake. Or, as Mr. Kaul put it, "What does ideology have to do with a sewer?"