How the Red Corridor votes

But if government schemes virtually come to a halt at the doorstep of the LWE districts,what about the political process?

Going by the post-delimitation political map of the country,these districts are covered by 29 Lok Sabha constituencies: four out of the 11 seats in Chhattisgarh fall in these districts; 1/29 in Madhya Pradesh; 1/80 in Uttar Pradesh; 2/42 in Andhra Pradesh; 6/40 in Bihar; 9/14 in Jharkhand; 2/48 in Maharashtra; and 4/21 in Orissa. Several of these 29 constituencies,however,straddle adjacent LWE and non-LWE districts.

A rough political profile based on electoral data compiled by the CSDS Data Unit for the 2009 Lok Sabha elections in these 29 constituencies would look like this:

amp;149; Turnout in LWE districts lags behind turnout in non-LWE districts and also behind the national average,though some states show a reversal of the national trend.

amp;149; BJP wins the highest number of seats in LWE areas. It overtakes its nearest contender,the Congress,by far. The BJP tally is more than double that of the Congress. NDA does better than UPA NDAs tally is more than double that of the UPA.

amp;149; In terms of vote share,though,the Congress is marginally ahead of the BJP in LWE areas. The BJPs vote share in LWE areas is higher than its national vote share; the reverse is true for the Congress. Among the national parties,Congress and BJP are followed by BSP.

amp;149; Left parties did not win any seats in LWE districts.

amp;149; Independent candidates bag a significant share of the vote in LWE districts of two states Jharkhand and Maharashtra.

POLL TURNOUT

At the all-India level,turnout in the 29 LWE constituencies was nearly four percentage points lower than the 514 non-LWE constituencies: 54.7 per cent in the former and 58.4 per cent in the rest. The average turnout for all 543 constituencies was 58.2 per cent.

But the picture gets more complicated when the all-India figures are disaggregated: Of the eight states,only three Bihar,Jharkhand and Orissa follow the all-India pattern of a lower turnout in LWE areas as compared to the rest. The remaining five states show a higher turnout in LWE areas than the rest.

The reversal of the national pattern is especially eye-catching in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh,each of which is home to two LWE constituencies. In Maharashtra,the turnout in LWE constituencies was 68.28 per cent and only 50.04 per cent in the rest; in Andhra Pradesh the figures were 80.41 per cent and 72.25 per cent respectively.

WHO WINS THE SEATS

The BJP is the party with the highest tally of seats in LWE districts. It bagged 12 out of the 29 seats; the Congress won only five. Along with its ally JDU in Bihar,the BJP score goes up to 16; the Congress and allies,JMM in Jharkhand and NCP in Maharashtra,together win only seven.

But are the states in which these constituencies fall,bastions of one party or the other? The picture is fairly evenly balanced on this score. The BJP has governments in three out of the eight states in question Chhattisgarh,Madhya Pradesh and Bihar in alliance with the JDU. The Congress has governments in two states Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The Left did not win any seats in LWE districts; neither did the BSP. The non-UPA/ NDA seats were distributed between regional parties like the SP1,BJD 2 and TDP 1. Independents won two seats.

In terms of vote percentages,however,the BJP does not retain its lead over the Congress in LWE districts. In fact,the Congress has the slight edge here. The BJP got 23.1 per cent of the vote in LWE areas but the Congress was marginally ahead at 23.8 per cent. Congress allies and BJP allies got exactly the same vote share of 4.8 per cent.

Left parties did not win any seats in LWE districts,but they got 2.7 per cent of the vote. The BSP overtook the Left with a vote share of 5.5 per cent. The Left gets a much larger share of the vote in non-LWE districts as compared to LWE districts. If its vote share was 2.7 per cent in the former,it was 7.9 in the rest of the country; its national vote share was 7.6 per cent.

For other parties,a comparison of their performance in LWE areas with their performance in non-LWE areas shows: The Congress got a lower vote share in LWE areas 23.8 per cent than in non-LWE areas 28.8 per cent,or in comparison to its national vote share of 28.6 per cent. But the BJP got a vote share in these areas 23.1 per cent higher than its national vote share 18.8 per cent or its vote share in non-LWE areas 18.6 per cent. That is,the BJPs presence increases in LWE districts while the Congresss imprint shrinks,relative to both parties performance outside these areas.

Again,the picture becomes more differentiated at the state level. For the Congress,for instance,Bihar frames an exceptionally sharp reversal of the national-level pattern. Its vote percentage in the six LWE constituencies of Bihar was 14.47 per cent,far ahead of its vote share in the rest of Bihar,9.56 per cent.

HOW INDEPENDENTS FARE

Independents won two of the 29 LWE seats. Both victories came in Jharkhand,the state that has hosted the curious and disquieting phenomenon of the rise of Independents and the corresponding dimunition of national parties. Jharkhand,remember,has even seen an Independent,Madhu Koda,elevated to the post of chief minister.

But Independent candidates also register a significant presence in Maharashtra. In both Jharkhand and Maharashtra,their vote percentage shot into double digits in LWE areas they registered a combined vote share of 14.49 per cent in Jharkhand and 17.23 per cent in Maharashtra. In the other six states,however,their combined vote failed to cross the highest mark of 6.81 per cent in Chhattisgarh in LWE areas.

Independent candidates get a higher vote share in LWE districts as compared to their vote share in non-LWE districts in Andhra Pradesh,Jharkhand,Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.