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Journalism of Courage
SET TO announce the Lok Sabha poll schedule in the coming days, the Election Commission has spent the past few months updating the electoral rolls. While the list will continue to be updated till the last date of filing of nominations by candidates, the EC said in early February that so far it had registered 96.9 crore voters for the general elections, up by 6% from 91.2 crore in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Since the beginning of 2023 alone, the EC has added 2.63 crore new voters.
Of the additional 5.68 crore voters, 1.85 crore are first-time voters, the EC said, or about 1.91% 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 23% this year, significant when several issues related to the youth 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%.
Earlier this week, the government launched a national campaign to encourage first-time voters to exercise their franchise. Last month, as part of the BJP youth outreach, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also virtually interacted with about 30 lakh first-time voters and urged them to send suggestions for the BJP’s election manifesto.
“Your vote and the country’s direction for the future are merged. It will make India the third largest economy and bring stable governments … It will make India more influential in the world. Your one vote has great strength,” Modi said.
The PM also appealed to first-time voters in his most recent “Mann Ki Baat” radio address. “Bharat is proud of its youth power that is full of passion and energy and the more the youth participate in the electoral process, the better the results will be for the country,” he had said.
CHART: Electorate in LS polls since 1951-52
As the above chart shows, in 1951-52, for the first Lok Sabha elections, there were 17.3 crore voters, in a total population of 36.1 crore. Since then, the electorate has grown nearly six-fold while the overall population has risen four-fold. Voter turnout, too, has risen consistently – from 45.7% in 1951-52 to a record-high 67.4% in 2019.
There is also an upward trend in the registration of women voters, with the gender ratio up from 928 in 2019 to 948 now, with men now accounting for 49.7 crore voters compared to 47.1 crore women. In 2019, 46.5 crore men and 43.1 crore women in the electorate.
The number of transgender voters has risen from 39,683 to 48,044 over the past five years.
In terms of the state electorates, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have the most voters, as of February 8. These states are also among the most populous in the country, though Tamil Nadu has more voters than Madhya Pradesh, which is the fifth most populous state.
The biggest growth in the electorate has been recorded in UP, which added 87.3 lakh voters over the last five years, followed by Bengal (59.8 lakh), Bihar (57.7 lakh), Rajasthan (48.8 lakh) and Madhya Pradesh (48.7 lakh).
In proportional terms, though, Meghalaya has seen the biggest increase since the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, of about 17.1%, followed by Jharkhand at 15.5%, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir at 13.1% each, and Telangana at 11.8%. The gender breakdown shows that these states also saw among the highest increases in women voters – Jharkhand topping with a 19.1% increase.
In contrast, the smallest increases in the total voters were seen in Goa and Punjab at 3.8%, followed by Manipur at 3.9%, Maharashtra at 4.6% and Odisha at 4.6%. These states also saw the smallest increases in women voters.
Overall though, every state and Union Territory saw the number of women voters increase by a greater proportion than men voters since 2019.
In terms of representation – the number of voters represented by each MP – Arunachal Pradesh leads with 4.4 lakh voters for each of its two MPs. Voters in Rajasthan are the most underrepresented with each of its 25 MPs representing an average 21.2 lakh voters, followed by Delhi (21.1 lakh) and Haryana (19.7 lakh).
Nationally, each of the 543 elected MPs is expected to represent an average 17.8 lakh voters given the rise in population, up from 16.8 lakh per MP in 2019.
MAP: State-wise average number of voters per MP
As part of its ongoing registration exercise, the EC has also deleted the names of 1.65 crore “deceased, permanently shifted, and duplicate electors” from the electoral rolls.
