It is probably the outcome of the previous elections. Voters did not have confidence that they would be able to cast their votes without any fear, and their vote will make a difference,” Prof Nizamuddin Ahmed, an expert on local governance system, told The Daily Star.

Given the intensity of the candidates’ campaigns, the voter turnout should have been higher, he said. “But the poor presence of voters indicates that the Election Commission could not earn trust of the voters.”

Echoing this view, Brig Gen (retd) Shakhawat Hossain, a former election commissioner, said people are losing trust in the electoral system because of the EC’s poor management.

“The election was apparently peaceful with an abnormal voter turnout,” he told this newspaper.

Chief Election Commissioner KM Nurul Huda predicted that the turnout would be less than 30 percent.

“It was a good election,” he told the reporters last night.

In the previous 2015 elections, the average voter turnout in the two city corporations was 43.92 percent -- 37.29 percent in north and 48.4 percent in south.