pune apathy failure of political parties to reach the electorate and the absence of good candidates cascaded into a poor voting percentage in pune cantonment constituency the constituency registered about 46 voting as a majority of the electorate preferred to stay away from casting ballots local activist azim gudakuwala said many people residing in societies did not step out to vote the response from slum voters too was lacklustre there have been a number of instances where a single voter received slips from five different candidates he did not want to spoil relations with any of them and so he stayed indoors said gudakuwala a senior citizen said some societies had asked candidates to pay incentives for voting some societies asked them to paint their buildings some sought construction of internal roads and some even asked for money to vote he said political workers said the final tally of percentage crossed 40 only because of the slum voters in the last couple of hours we took batches of slum voters to the polling centres we had to offer them incentives like dinner admitted a party worker tony areas like koregaon park and wanowrie had their own reasons to stay away from voting there is basic apathy towards voting in these areas people are indifferent to political developments voting is never a priority here said n s inamdar a professional some voters said they wanted to vote but were unhappy with the candidates we had very little or no choice parties should have fielded better candidates i did not vote because i felt that voting for any candidate in the fray would be a waste of my vote said rani gaikwad a student she was unaware of the nota option some voters felt elected representatives have no power in cantonment areas and it was the defence authorities who mattered defence people rule here not elected representatives one has to wait for road repairs or a garden for years and elected representatives are ineffective in the cantonment locals said sitting mla and former minister of state for home ramesh bagwe contested as congress candidate while the bharatiya janata party bjp fielded senior leader dilip kamble and nationalist congress party ncp nominated bhagvan vairat other contestants in the battle include parshuram wadekar of the republican party of india athavale who is contesting on a shiv sena ticket and ajay tayde of maharashtra navnirman sena mns