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News: Indian PM urge citizens and party workers to achieve 75% voter turnout in upcoming elections. As it is achievable due to the extraordinary work done by the Election Commission to expand the voting rights of citizens.
How India electoral process is different from the USA?
Indian Constitution makers favoured an independent constitution body “Election Commission” to oversee elections. This works better than the US model of a decentralized electoral process. That model is sewing chaos and leading to voter suppression.
| Read here: US Federal Election Commission Vs Indian Election commission |
In fact, owing to the efforts of the Election Commission, India has moved in the direction of easier enrolment and improved access to voting for citizens.
What are the achievements of the Election Commission in voter turnout?
The body gave special attention to regions with low women enrolment. This resulted in new female voters having grown at a faster rate (5.1%) than male voters (3.6%) and also resulted in increased female participation in elections. For e.g. Bihar in 2020 has witnessed 60% of eligible women turning out to vote against 54% of men.
| Read here: Functioning of the Election Commission – Explained, pointwise |
What are the areas of voter turnout, that needs the Election Commission’s attention?
It has been noticed that urban voters are not turning up for voting despite rapid urbanization. Voting percentages in 2017 Mumbai’s BMC and Delhi’s MCD elections were low at 52% and 54%, respectively. Similarly, in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Chennai’s turnout was 61% against TN’s 73%, Bengaluru’s was 48% against Karnataka’s 58%, and Hyderabad’s 52% against undivided AP’s 72%.
According to the 2017 EPW paper, the authors argued that it is recent migrants to cities that are not turning out to vote. With increasing internal migration, migrants are losing their votes at their source and destination. This needs the immediate attention of the Election Commission.
Source: This post is based on the article “Targeting 75%: With migration on the rise, EC must evolve strategies so that migrants don’t lose out on voting day ” published in Times of India on 27th January 2022.
