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UP Assembly Election: Did voter turnout drop in later phases?

deborah grey    
While voter turnout in the first four phases remained well above 60 percent in many districts, in phase five and six it has hovered in the low to mid-fifties for most regions

UP electionsImage: NDTV

As the seventh and last phase of voting is underway in Uttar Pradesh let us have a look at the voter turnout so far. While the initial phases showed high enthusiasm among voters with some regions registering turnout well above 60 percent, it appears to have fizzled out in the later phases. Given UP’s complex communal and caste dynamics, this requires further investigation.

Ordinarily a large voter turnout indicates a strong anti-incumbency factor. In 2017, when Yogi Adityanath came to power, the voter turnout was 61.04 percent, when the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) government was ousted. So, what does the voter turnout data indicate so far? For the purpose of this analysis, we will take figures as released by the Uttar Pradesh State Election Commission (SEC) at 5 P.M on the day of polling for each phase.

In phase-1, polling took place in 58 constituencies spread across eleven districts: Agra, Aligarh, Baghpat, Bulandshahr,  Gautam Buddh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Hapur, Mathura, Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and Shamli. 623 candidates were vying for the votes of 2.27 crore eligible voters in this phase. Many of these districts are home to a large agrarian community that participated in the nationwide farmer protests in 2020-2021. Some of these areas have also seen communal and caste-based violence in the last decade. As per the UP SEC, at 5 P.M on February 10, overall voter turnout for districts going to polls in this phase stood at 57.79 percent, with Muzaffarnagar recording the highest turnout at 62.14 percent, followed closely by Shamli at 61.78 percent. Baghpat, Hapur and Bulandshahr also recorded a turnout of over 60 percent.

 

 

In phase-2, polling took place in 55 constituencies spread across nine districts: Amroha, Badaun, Bareilly, Bijnaur, Moradabad, Rampur, Sambhal, Saharanpur and Shahjahanpur. 586 candidates were vying for the votes of nearly 2 crore voters in this phase. As per UP SEC, at 5 P.M on February 14, overall voter turnout stood at 60.44 percent. However, impressive polling figures were recorded in Saharanpur (67.13 percent), Amroha (66.19 percent), Moradabad (64.88 percent) and Bijnaur (61.48 percent). All these places have been in the news over the last five years for communal and caste-based violence, and a high voter turnout perhaps indicates that people have had enough.

 

 

Phase-3 saw polling in 59 Assembly constituencies in 16 districts: Auriya, Etah, Etawah, Farrukhabad, Firozabad, Hathras, Hamirpur, Jalaun, Jhansi, Kannauj, Kanpur Dehat, Kanpur Nagar, Kasganj, Lalitpur, Mainpuri and Mahoba. The fate of 627 candidates was in the hands of 2.15 crore eligible voters. As per UP SEC, at 5 P.M on February 20, overall voter turnout stood at 57.58 percent. Lalitpur recorded the highest voter turnout here at 67.38 percent, followed by Etah at 63.58 percent and Mahoba at 62.02 percent. It is noteworthy that Hathras is where the shocking rape of a young Dalit woman took place after which the police allegedly forcibly cremated her body. Meanwhile Kasganj has seen communal violence in 2018 as well has been the site of the mysterious custodial death of a young man named Altaf who allegedly died by suicide in a police station toilet in 2021.

 

 

In phase-4, polling was held in 59 Assembly seats in nine districts: Banda, Fatehpur, Hardoi, Kheri, Lucknow, Pilibhit, Rae Bareli, Sitapur and Unnao. As per UP SEC, at 5 P.M on February 23, overall voter turnout stood at 57.45 percent. Here, Kheri registered a turnout of 62.42 percent, and Pilibhit followed close behind with 61.33 percent. Turnout remained at a tepid 55.08 percent in Lucknow despite this being the hub of police brutality during the anti-CAA protests.

 

 

It is from phase-5 that one can notice a marked change. Polling was held in 61 Assembly seats spread across 12 districts: Amethi, Ayodhya, Baharaich, Barabanki, Chitrakoot, Gonda, Kaushambi, Pratapgarh, Prayagraj, Rae Bareli, Shraswati and Sultanpur. As many as 692 candidates were vying for the votes of 2.24 crore voters. But for the first time, the overall voter turnout at 5 P.M as revealed by the UP SEC was below 55 percent; it stood at a mere 53.93 percent. This phase saw polling in constituencies that were once traditional Congress bastions like Amethi and Rae Bareli, as well as other major districts like Ayodhya and Prayagraj, yet turnout remained under 60 percent everywhere with only Chitrakoot coming close at 59.50 percent, followed by Ayodhya at 58.01 percent.

 

 

In phase-6 the turnout dropped further. Polling was held in 57 Assembly seats across 10 districts: Ambedkar Nagar, Balrampur, Balia, Basti, Deoria, Gorakhpur, Kushinagar, Maharajganj, Sant Kabir Nagar and Siddharthnagar. For the first time in a row, the overall voter turnout at 5 P.M as revealed by the UP SEC was below 55 percent; it stood at a mere 53.31 percent. Ambedkar Nagar recorded the highest turnout at 58.66 percent, but it was an abysmal 48.53 percent in Balrampur. In Gorakhpur, the bastion of incumbent UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, it remained at lukewarm 53.89 percent.

 

This brings us to phase-7 where polling is taking place across 54 Assembly seats spread across nine districts: Azamgarh, Bhadohi, Chandauli, Ghazipur, Jaunpur, Mau, Mirzapur, Sonebhadra and Varanasi. While Azamgarh is the bastion of Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, Varanasi is yet to emerge from the shadow of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had famously contested Parliamentary elections from here.

At the time of publishing the piece polling was still underway. We will update the piece after voter turnout data becomes available after the close of polling.

The plight of Purvanchal

This is what is commonly referred to as the Purvanchal region. CJP’s on-ground teams have been active here providing humanitarian aid and other relief during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is when we got an insight into the lives of the people of Purvanchal, particularly the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on their livelihood.

Purvanchal is home to a large community of traditional weavers. These men and women work on both handlooms and power-looms and also engage in allied activities like zardozi and Aari work, embroidery, application of semi-precious stones on sarees, saree decoration, cutting and polishing etc. Though they predominantly hail from the Muslim community, there are also a sizable number from the Hindu community including many people from Scheduled Castes. When the first Lockdown was declared in 2020, all business and employment opportunities for weavers suddenly came to a grinding halt. Many families were pushed to the brink of starvation, often struggling to get even a single meal that was usually just a few morsels of salt and rice. The condition of women, who were anyway rarely paid for their work as it was presumed to be part of their household chores, worsened with the pandemic Not only were they affected by severe malnutrition, domestic violence was also prevalent, not to mention how many girls were forced to drop out of school to help take care of their other siblings. But it wasn’t just the Covid-19 induced Lockdown that was to blame. The weaving industry had suffered for decades due to faulty policies and improperly implemented subsidies over the last few decades. You can read our full report here.

Another shocker was how Covid-19 deaths were grossly under-reported in the state. During November-December 2021, the Uttar Pradesh team of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) undertook a mammoth exercise to collect records of deaths from 2017 to August 2021, as maintained by local offices in villages and urban areas in the Purvanchal region of eastern Uttar Pradesh. We succeeded in obtaining complete records from 129 areas, largely in Varanasi and Ghazipur districts.

A basic analysis of this data reveals a big spike in recorded deaths in 2020-2021 compared to previous years as well as to expectations based on government data on Uttar Pradesh’s death rate. While not all deaths can be conclusively attributed to Covid-19, it is reasonable to conclude that the pandemic played a key role in the huge increase in mortality. From January 2020 to August 2021, the areas surveyed saw around 60% more recorded deaths than expected from 2019 records as well as from government data on the death rate in the state before the pandemic. If the rise in mortality in these areas was repeated across all of Uttar Pradesh, the state as a whole could have had around 14 lakh (1.4 million) excess deaths during the pandemic – roughly 60-times Uttar Pradesh’s official Covid-19 death toll of 23,000. Read more here.

Women and Migrant Voters

Another interesting element with respect to voter turnout is the turnout among women voters and migrant workers. In an interview with YouTube news channel Satya Hindi, research scholar Kartikeya Batra said, “I’m curious to see how women will vote in UP. In Bihar, for example, women voted overwhelmingly for JD(U) irrespective of their caste. It remains to be seen if something similar would happen in UP.” He further shed light on another curious element saying, “While it is true that usually the voter turnout among women is higher than men in areas that come under phase 6 and 7, it is largely because the men here have migrated to other parts of the country. But the gap between the women’s vote and men’s vote has reduced this time, suggesting that the men who were forced to return to their villages due to the Covid-19 Lockdown, have not gone back to their places of work and are casting their vote this time.”

CJP had pointed out in its memorandum to the Election Commission as part of its Let Migrants Vote campaign, Uttar Pradesh is among the largest sender states i.e it sends out a large number of people to work in other parts of the country. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, major sender states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh had among lowest voter turnout rates at 57.33% and 59.21% respectively (when the national average was 67.4%).

Our petition had pointed out that Migrant labourers or ‘guest workers’ have their names registered in their home states while they migrate, albeit temporarily, to other states in search of work. A vast majority of migrant labourers are unable to exercise their franchise due to economic constraints and their inability to undertake the commute to their home states in the single-day nation-wide holiday that is declared for Parliamentary elections. They are also unable to cast votes in their host states as they do not fulfil the requirements of “ordinary resident” or usual resident to be registered as a voter of that constituency.

According to the 2011 census, the number of internal migrants stands at 45 crores, a 45% surge from the earlier census of 2001. Among these, 26% of the migration, i.e., 11.7 crores, occurs inter-district within the same state, while 12% of the migration, i.e., 5.4 crores, occurs inter-state.

Circular migration accounts for those migrants that have not permanently relocated to host cities, and instead circulate between host and home cities. For instance, short term and circular migration could itself amount to 6-6.5 crore migrants, which including family members, could approach 10 crore people. Half of these are inter-state migrants. CJP had suggested that Migrant Voters be allowed to cast their votes via postal ballot.

Related:

Purvanchal: Silence of the Looms

In 2021, COVID Deaths Surged in Stunning Fashion in Eastern UP, Investigation Finds   

Let Migrants Vote

 

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