© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
With the Election Commission (EC) on Saturday announcing the schedule of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, 96.8 crore electors are set to vote across seven phases. Polling will be held between April 19 and June 1, followed by results on June 4.
India’s electorate has grown manifold since its first Lok Sabha election in 1951-52, when there were just 17.32 crore voters. Compared to 2019, the number of registered voters is up by 6% from 91.2 crore. Since the beginning of 2023 alone, the EC has added 2.63 crore new voters.
Of the additional 5.6 crore voters since 2019, 1.8 crore are first-time voters, the EC said, or about 1.9% of the total. Compared to 2019, when there were 1.5 crore first-time voters, enrollment of those aged 18-19 is up by about 20% this year, significant when several issues related to youths, such as unemployment, educational opportunities, are big concerns among voters. Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, first-time voters accounted for a marginally lower share of the electorate at 1.64%. This time, there are also 19.7 crore young voters aged 20 to 29.
There has been an upward trend in the registration of women voters too, with the gender ratio up from 928 in 2019 to 948 now, with men accounting for 49.7 crore voters compared to 47.1 crore women. In 2019, 46.5 crore men and 43.1 crore women formed the electorate. This year, there are 12 states with a gender ratio more than 1,000 compared to 8 states in 2019. Women also account for 85.3 lakh first-time voters.
The number of transgender voters has risen from 39,683 to over 48,000 over the past five years.
In 2019, too, the elections were held across seven phases. This year, the first phase will be the most expansive, covering 21 states and 102 constituencies. Last time, too, the first phase saw the most states go to polls at 20 but it was only in the third phase that the most seats, at 115, voted together.
The number of polling booths is up from 10.35 lakh in 2019 to 10.5 lakh now. The EC is deputing more than 1.5 crore officials and security personnel to oversee voting. In 2019, allegations by the Opposition CPI(M) of voter suppression and threat to its supporters had led to the EC cancelling elections in the Tripura East seat.
The EC also noted the influence of money on polls, highlighting the seizures made during recent state elections. In 11 state Assembly elections in 2022-23, about Rs 3,400 crore in contraband was seized, up by 835% from five years prior.
In Lok Sabha polls, too, seizures spiked from 2014 to 2019, from a total of approximately Rs 1,200 crore to Rs 3,476 crore. In 2014, drugs alone accounted for Rs 804 crore of the total seizures; by 2019, they accounted for Rs 1,280 crore.
In 2019, Tamil Nadu saw the highest value of seizures at Rs 952 crore, followed by Gujarat at Rs 554 crore and Delhi at Rs 430 crore. Notably, polling was cancelled in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore seat after Rs 12 crore in cash was allegedly seized from a DMK leader’s associate.
